Protected Areas

Protected Areas // 3.4 - Sustainable finance

3.4 - Sustainable finance

Goal 3.4: To ensure financial sustainability of protected areas and national and regional systems of protected areas
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Target:

By 2008, sufficient financial, technical and other resources to meet the costs to effectively implement and manage national and regional systems of protected areas are secured, including both from national and international sources, particularly to support the needs of developing countries and countries with economies in transition and small island developing States.


Suggested activities of the Parties

  • 3.4.1 Conduct a national-level study by 2005 of the effectiveness in using existing financial resources and of financial needs related to the national system of protected areas and identify options for meeting these needs through a mixture of national and international resources and taking into account the whole range of possible funding instruments, such as public funding, debt for nature swaps, elimination of perverse incentives and subsidies, private funding, taxes and fees for ecological services .

  • 3.4.2 By 2008, establish and begin to implement country-level sustainable financing plans that support national systems of protected areas, including necessary regulatory, legislative, policy, institutional and other measures.

  • 3.4.3 Support and further develop international funding programmes to support implementation of national and regional systems of protected areas in developing countries and countries with economies in transition and small island developing States.

  • 3.4.4 Collaborate with other countries to develop and implement sustainable financing programmes for national and regional systems of protected areas.

  • 3.4.5 Provide regular information on protected areas financing to relevant institutions and mechanisms, including through future national reports under the Convention on Biological Diversity, and to the World Database on Protected Areas.

  • 3.4.6 Encourage integration of protected areas needs into national and, where applicable, regional development and financing strategies and development cooperation programmes.

Suggested supporting activities of the Executive Secretary

  • 3.4.7 Convene as soon as possible, but not later than 2005, a meeting of the donor agencies and other relevant organizations to discuss options for mobilizing new and additional funding to developing countries and countries with economies in transition and small island developing States for implementation of the programme of work.

  • 3.4.8 Compile and disseminate case-studies and best practices concerning protected area financing through the clearing-house mechanism and other media.

  • 3.4.9 Review and disseminate by 2006 studies on the value of ecosystem services provided by protected areas.

Key activities include:

  • Assess financial needs and identify options for meeting these needs
  • Establish and implement national sustainable financing plans
  • Support international funding programmes to support protected area systems in developing countries
  • Collaborate with other countries to develop and implement regional sustainable financing programmes
  • Provide information on protected area financing to relevant institutions
  • Encourage the integration of protected area needs into national development and finance strategies

What is financial sustainability and a sustainable finance plan?

Financial sustainability is the ability of a protected area system to meet its financial needs into the future, without compromising protected area objectives. This includes accounting for new protected areas that might be created as a result of gap assessments, as well as effectively managing existing protected areas, including any actions that result from a management effectiveness assessment. A sustainable finance plan is a plan that will ensure that the full costs of a protected area system are met, both now and into the future. A sound financial plan should ensure that the growth of income matches or exceeds the growth of expected costs of establishing new protected areas, and managing new and existing protected areas. A common mistake that many protected area planners make is to develop a sustainable finance plan that covers the costs of the existing system, rather than covering the costs of a the protected area system described in the vision statement of the protected area system master plan. Planners should ensure that the financial plan covers all contingencies. One way to do this is to develop financing plans for multiple scenarios.

What is an assessment of financial sustainability?

An assessment of financial sustainability is an analysis of the financial needs of the protected area system, including future needs for filling ecological gaps and improving management effectiveness, an analysis of the existing financial resources, and an analysis of the ways and means to fill the gap between the two.

What steps are involved in assessing financial sustainability?

Typical steps involved in assessing financial sustainability include:

  1. Conduct a financial gap analysis of current income versus expenditures, differentiating between basic and optimal costs, and including the costs of improving protected area management.
  2. Assess protected area management and capacity needs by identifying key threats and management weaknesses in the existing system, and identifying critical capacity needs.
  3. Develop cost estimates for the creation and management needs over a ten-year time horizon, including minimum, medium, and ideal growth scenarios.
  4. Screen and assess existing and new funding mechanisms to address financial gaps, including an assessment of how fiscal and management reforms might reduce overall expenditures.
  5. Formulate financial plans at system and site levels, with multi-year action plans, including strategic funding mechanisms, resource allocations, fiscal and management reform opportunities, management and capacity building needs, and the implementation plan.

What are potential sustainable finance mechanisms?

  • Bilateral and multi-lateral funding, where a fund is established to finance environmental projects, remains a significant source of funding for creating and improving protected area systems for many countries.
  • Biodiversity enterprises that provide capital to small and medium-scale enterprises that contribute to biodiversity conservation in or around protected areas (e.g., shade-grown coffee, ecotourism).
  • Biodiversity offset projects mitigate or offset land-conversion activities, such as forest clearing, dam creation, and road building. Biodiversity offsets may be voluntary or regulatory.
  • Biodiversity prospecting is the search for biochemical and genetic materials from nature that can be applied commercially to pharmaceutical, agricultural, cosmetic and other applications.
  • Carbon offset projects that reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere through a range of activities, including emissions trading, which enables countries to purchase emissions units from other countries; joint implementation, which give credits to countries who invest in emissions-reducing activities in another country; and removal units, which provide credits for forestry-related activities.
  • Debt-for-nature swaps are a mechanism whereby a creditor (typically an industrial country) renegotiates the terms of a developing country’s debt to fund biodiversity conservation, often resulting in the creation of a privately-controlled conservation trust fund.
  • Environmental funds can be permanently endowed grants from governments and donor agencies, as well as by ongoing user fees or taxes, that are earmarked for conservation and protected areas.
  • Foundation grants are funds provided by private, charitable organizations, but typically are time-bound and do not fund operational, overhead or recurring costs.
  • Market and tax incentives provide financial incentives to individuals, communities and corporations for actions that improve biodiversity conservation (e.g., tax incentives for maintaining forest cover, market premiums for certified forestry operations).
  • Payments for ecosystem services capture economic value from the services and benefits provided by nature. These services include watershed services (drinking water storage, flow regulation, flood control), climate control (regulation of temperature and precipitation) and agricultural services (soil protection, genetic resource conservation, crop pollination).
  • Taxes, fees and fines are recurring sources of revenue that can fund protected area establishment and management costs. Taxes may come from a range of sources, including sales, property and income taxes, and publicly issued bonds. Fees may come from direct users, including both visitors and commercial operations, as well as indirect users, such as communities that depend upon drinking water from the protected area. Fines from illegal activities can also be directed toward protected area creation and management.



E-learning module

Module 18: Marine Protected Areas

This module shows how the CBD Programme of Work on Protected Areas applies in a marine environment, and enables protected area planners to increase marine protection, improve the marine protected area network, and reduce threats to the marine environment.

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External forum

Protected areas and finance

For those interested in protected area finance.

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E-learning module

Module 11: Sustainable finance

This module covers aspects related to sustainable finance (PoWPA Goal 3.4), including business planning, assessing finance needs, and developing a sustainable finance plan.

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Report
This report estimates the cost of implementing Target 11, including the costs of a) creating new protected areas; b) establishing connectivity corridors; c) effectively managing new and existing protected areas; d) strengthening protected area enabling environments and sustainable finance; and e) conducting key protected area assessments.
Themes:3.4 Financial sustainability and business planning
Topics:Financing
10/3/2012
Report
A SYNTHESIS OF THE APPROACH, CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS OF TEEB
Themes:3.4 Financial sustainability and business planning,2.1 Equity and benefit sharing,3.1 Enabling policy and legal environment
Topics:Benefits and values,Cost benefit assessment
4/12/2012
Report
Workshop Report: Tropical forests contain more than half of all terrestrial life on Earth. [ 1 ] The biodiversity and ecosystem services these forests support are economically valued in the order of trillions of dollars annually [ 2 ] and underpin climate, food, energy, water, health and livelihood security for millions of people across the globe.
Themes:3.4 Financial sustainability and business planning
Topics:Financing
9/19/2011
Report
This study investigates the extent to which projects - which, according to the WWF, conserve biological diversity - can be run in an economically profitable way, so that they attract the necessary capital from private investors (‘sustainable investments’). The result is an innovative entrepreneurial concept for preserving biological diversity that invests in privately run, profit-orientated nature conservation projects worldwide.
Themes:3.4 Financial sustainability and business planning
Topics:Financing,Sustainable finance
9/6/2011
E-learning module
This module shows how the CBD Programme of Work on Protected Areas applies in a marine environment, and enables protected area planners to increase marine protection, improve the marine protected area network, and reduce threats to the marine environment.
Themes:1.1 Ecological network and gap assessments,1.2 Protected area policy and landscape integration,3.4 Financial sustainability and business planning,1.3 Regional networks and transboundary areas,1.4 Management planning and climate change adaptation,1.5 Protected area threats and restoration,4.2 Management effectiveness assessments,2.2 Participation of indigenous and local communities,3.1 Enabling policy and legal environment,PoWPA Implementation
Topics:Adaptive management,Benefits and values,Multi-sectoral commitees,Best practices,Connectivity,Partnerships and collaboration,Conservation planning,Policy integration,Ecological gaps,Financing,Protected area system master plan,Regional challenges,Governance,Resilience and adaptation planning,Sustainable use,Mainstreaming,Management effectiveness,Training and curricula,Management planning,Marine
6/10/2011
Website
This Tool Kit shares the experiences of contributing Environmental Funds – their legal documents, manuals, plans, and communications materials. The goal is to help guide the creation and start-up of new Funds, promote best practices for existing Funds, and increase the efficiency and effectiveness to secure, and expend, reliable funding streams for biodiversity conservation. There are approximately 40 Environmental Funds – also called Conservation Trust Funds – with a biodiversity conservation focus, established around the globe. Environmental Funds are internationally recognized for their role in channeling global funds to support national conservation priorities. This website provides an ongoing means of sharing documents and best practices between them. The Tool Kit is intended to provide ideas and examples on how other Funds have organized. No effort has been made to qualify or rank the value of the documents. They are original documents, in original languages, without claim to their relative merits, and are not intended for copying sample text verbatim. All Funds need to craft and adapt their documents to local legal systems, cultural norms, and institutional alliances.
Themes:3.4 Financial sustainability and business planning
Topics:Financing
4/29/2011
Comprehensive guide
This document is an orientation to sources of funding for protected areas and biodiversity conservation. It is designed to serve as a primer for protected area agencies and managers as well as nongovernmental organizations carrying out programs of conservation, education, and sustainable uses of biodiversity resources in and around protected areas. The editors intend to provide the reader with a basic understanding of the mechanisms that can be used to raise funds and generate revenues, as well as the sources of financial and technical support generally available for protected areas and biodiversity conservation in the Wider Caribbean. All of the mechanisms, and many of the sources, will also have applications outside the Wider Caribbean region. This document is also intended to assist governments of the region in meeting their obligations acquired under biodiversity-related agreements, such as the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and in particular the 1990 Protocol Concerning Specially Protected Areas and Wildlife (SPAW) and the Convention on the Protection and Development of the Marine Environment of the Wider Caribbean Cartagena 1983). Therefore, the report responds to requests made by the governments of the region, members of the Caribbean Environment Programme of UNEP, and Parties to the Cartagena Convention and SPAW Protocol. In this context, it is expected that this document will contribute to regional and national efforts in strengthening protected areas and also the work of the regional network on Marine Protected Areas (CaMPAM) of the Caribbean Environment Programme. It is a joint effort of UNEP’s Regional Coordinating Unit for the CEP and The Nature Conservancy.
Themes:3.4 Financial sustainability and business planning
Topics:Financing,Marine
4/29/2011
Comprehensive guide
This guide describes over 30 mechanisms for financing the conservation of marine biodiversity, both within and outside of MPAs. Its main purpose is to familiarize conservation professionals-i.e., the managers and staff of government conservation agencies, international donors, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs)-with a menu of options for financing the conservation of marine and coastal biodiversity. A number of economic incentives mechanisms for marine conservation (as contrasted with revenue-raising mechanisms) are also presented n section 5 (on Real Estate and Development Rights) and section 6 (on Fishing Industry Revenues).
Themes:3.4 Financial sustainability and business planning
Topics:Financing,Marine
4/29/2011
This paper describes more than 25 different ways of raising revenues for protected areas. It summarizes their relative advantages and disadvantages and lists sources for obtaining further information. It is intended as a practical tool for protected-area managers, finance ministry officials, international donor agencies, and local conservation organizations.
Themes:3.4 Financial sustainability and business planning
Topics:Financing
4/29/2011
Comprehensive guide
With hundreds of billions of dollars needed for development and climate change mitigation and adaptation, it initially seems a difficult task to finance biodiversity at the level required. The Little Biodiversity Finance Book aims to dispel this impression by clearly laying out options for financing biodiversity and ecosystem services and by highlighting the need and potential for synergies not only between financing mechanisms, but also between financing sources earmarked for development, climate change and biodiversity.
Themes:3.4 Financial sustainability and business planning
Topics:Financing
4/29/2011
Comprehensive guide
This guide is designed to help expand the use of sustainable finance mechanisms to support the conservation of biological diversity. It covers a broad cross section of finance mechanisms and contains highly practical, user-friendly tools to support the use of these mechanisms.
Themes:3.4 Financial sustainability and business planning
Topics:Financing
4/29/2011
Comprehensive guide
This groundbreaking Report compares and aggregates official financial data and qualitative insights about the health of Protected Area (PA) financial sustainability for 20 Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) countries1. Locally and regionally, the PAs analysed provide direct and indirect benefits over their combined area for a population of 564 million people in these 20 countries. Globally, LAC PA systems contain and support many important benefits in the areas of biodiversity conservation, human development, and, increasingly, ecosystems services to manage carbon sequestration.
Themes:3.4 Financial sustainability and business planning
Topics:Financing
4/29/2011
Comprehensive guide
These guidelines have been prepared for protected area planners and managers in the East Asia region. The advice addresses one of the most critical issues which planners and managers face in this region: obtaining the funds needed to ensure the survival and success of protected areas. This report advocates a “business approach” to protected area management. This means the identification of consumer groups obtaining goods and services from protected areas, and attempting to capture a fair return from these groups. Part 1 addresses the principles involved and is not specific to the region. It emphasises that business plans must be subordinate to the conservation aims of the protected area. Government allocation for protected area management should continue to be the foundation of their financing, as protected areas provide many public goods and services at a local, regional, national and global level. Direct and indirect benefits are derived from protected areas. They also supply private and public goods. There is a crucial relationship between the type of benefit provided, the consumer groups involved and the type of financial mechanism that can be utilised. Together these will help shape the business plan for the protected area. So park managers need to know about these three variables before adopting a business approach to protected area management.
Themes:3.4 Financial sustainability and business planning
Topics:Financing
4/29/2011
Report
This report aims to contribute to the ongoing discussion about how to increase the flows of international funds for biodiversity conservation. This discussion has figured in the agenda of all major forums on the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) since the convention’s inception in 1992.1 The funding challenge has also been a concern of the conservation movement and has attracted the interest of the U.N. General Assembly, U.N. agencies, academics and international financial institutions, which have focused both on how to finance biodiversity conservation and on the broader issue of how to finance the provision of global public goods (the global commons).
Themes:3.4 Financial sustainability and business planning
Topics:Financing
4/29/2011
Report
Le financement pérenne des AMP reste un problème majeur. En effet une fois que les projets se sont retirés, de nombreuses AMP bien mises en place se sont ensuite effondrées ne devenant que des AMP « de papier » (exemple de Mohéli aux Comores). Or les fonds des bailleurs internationaux ou bilatéraux, tout comme ceux des grandes ONG, destinés à financer le démarrage des AMP et les investissements qu’ils nécessitent (ex : bateau, bâtiments, bouées de délimitation) s’inscrivent dans une durée d’intervention limitée. Ces financements s’arrêtent avec la fin des projets, ce qui signifie le plus souvent un arrêt total des financements disponibles, sans que les AMP disposent de solution robustes pour assurer a minima les coûts de fonctionnement. Cette situation ne signifie pas qu’il n’y a pas de solution de financement pérenne, mais plutôt que les projets se retirent souvent avant d’avoir pu solidement établir et professionnaliser les dispositifs de financement durables.
Themes:3.4 Financial sustainability and business planning
Topics:Financing,Marine
4/29/2011
Report
Over the past two years, discussions on Protected Area (PA) finance have formed a key agenda item during global deliberations on biodiversity conservation. Both the Vth IUCN World Parks Congress (Durban, September 2003) and the seventh Meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the Convention on Biological Diversity (Kuala Lumpur, February 2004) observed that insufficient investment is being made in biodiversity conservation in general and protected areas in particular. Both meetings called for innovative approaches to generate the additional funding required to ensure that biodiversity of global, national and local significance is conserved. A recent international meeting on biodiversity science and governance, hosted by UNESCO and the government of France (Paris, January 2005), likewise identified finance as one of several critical issues to be addressed if the world is to meet the CBD/WSSD 2010 Biodiversity Target. A particular concern in all of these processes has been the level and types of funding available for PAs, which lie at the core of global efforts to conserve biodiversity.
Themes:3.4 Financial sustainability and business planning
Topics:Financing
4/29/2011
Report
This report is the first response to the request, by the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, to prepare periodic global monitoring reports on the implementation of the strategy for resource mobilization. It looks at the funding trends revealed by the Rio markers on biodiversity of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development/Development Assistance Committee, national reports of Parties, trends in funding to Global Environment Facility, and funding flows through a selected number of the large international non-governmental organizations. Further information on certain innovative financial mechanisms is analyzed on the basis of the results of the Bonn Workshop on Innovative Financial Mechanisms held in January 2010.
Themes:3.4 Financial sustainability and business planning
Topics:Financing
4/29/2011
External forum
For those interested in protected area finance.
Themes:3.4 Financial sustainability and business planning
5/8/2010
E-learning module
This module covers aspects related to sustainable finance (PoWPA Goal 3.4), including business planning, assessing finance needs, and developing a sustainable finance plan.
Themes:3.4 Financial sustainability and business planning
5/8/2010
Short guide
It's a parks magazine about tourism and protected areas. (60 pages)
Themes:3.4 Financial sustainability and business planning
Topics:Tourism
4/16/201026624 Kb
Brochure
Brochure on conservation finance: strategies for protected areas and protected area systems. (16 pages).
Themes:3.4 Financial sustainability and business planning
4/16/20103072 Kb
Report
It's a report about feasibility study on financing mechanisms for conservation and sustainable management of central african forests (24 pages).
Themes:3.4 Financial sustainability and business planning
4/15/2010404 Kb
Comprehensive guide
The IPG Handbook on Environmental Funds. PUBLISHED BY THE INTERAGENCY PLANNING GROUP ON ENVIRONMENTAL FUNDS (IPG). (137 pages).
Themes:3.4 Financial sustainability and business planning
4/15/20102048 Kb
Article
It's an article about incentives for greener infrastructure. (21 pages).
Themes:3.1 Enabling policy and legal environment,3.4 Financial sustainability and business planning
Topics:Incentives
4/15/2010111 Kb
Assessment methodology
An updated version of UNDP's Financial Scorecard, an assessment tool that enables countries to gauge the financial sustainability of their protected area system.
Themes:3.4 Financial sustainability and business planning
4/15/2010496 Kb
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