Geoparks and Sustainable Development: Systematic Review

The geoparks' primary objective is to promote local sustainable development based on three key strategies: geotourism, geoconservation, and education. Given the increased interest in the creation of geoparks and the strengthening of UNESCO's global geopark program, this work aims to better understand the relationship and contributions of geoparks to sustainable development, based on a systematic review consisting of bibliometric analyses and content review of the main scientific publications, from the Scopus database. The results of the bibliometric analysis show a significant increase in the number of articles, especially in the last decade, published in more than 40 journals. Most of the works were developed in geopark territories-the reason why countries in Asia, Europe, and Latin America, which concentrate the largest amount of geoparks and studies, stand out. Regarding the content review, the results indicate that the inventory of geodiversity and the presentation of activities related to geoconservation and geotourism are the main topics addressed. These articles were developed with different methodologies, and explain the relationship with sustainable development, which is established from possible economic and social benefits through geotourism and environmental protection. Although most academic works recognize the intrinsic relationship between geoparks and sustainable development, few works propose in-depth discussions about this relationship and the substantial results about the benefits to local populations.