More than fifteen protected areas, including one managing monk seals off Mauritania and another in Sumatra that is home to orangutans, tigers and elephants, are to receive a US$6.8 million conservation boost.

At the 10th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity in Nagoya, Japan, the government of Spain and the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) announced a new partnership for protected areas under the LifeWeb initiative Thursday.

The partnership, supporting mainly low income and developing countries, aims to deliver benefits not just for biodiversity but for communities living in and around protected areas.

For example, in the Garamba National Park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, some of the funds will support improved health services for local people.

In Panama and El Salvador, support to the Mesoamerican terrestrial protected areas will help develop innovative economic and legal instruments to promote sustainable use of biodiversity and ecosystems through their social and economic values, and the ecosystem services.

The partnership will also support the establishment of new protected areas that in turn can generate new streams incomes for local people. This includes improving links between existing national parks and marine reserves in West Africa to create a protected area network for sea turtles, in Cote d'Ivoire, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau and Senegal.

Teresa Ribera, Spain's Secretary of State for Climate Change, said: "The growth in Protected Areas is one of the real success stories of conservation over the past half century. The challenge is to ensure that as many as possible of these around 100,000 sites are well-managed and in a way that maximizes livelihood and income opportunities for people alongside securing the biodiversity and economically-important ecosystems found at such important sites.