Financing Nature Conservation

The Conservation Finance Alliance continues to promote and support the use and update of the Environmental Funds Tool Kit, available online at http://toolkit.conservationfinance.org.

In 2010, twenty nine Environmental Funds from around the globe provided great contribution to the Tool Kit by sharing their best material in this online platform – a total of about 200 documents organized in nine categories. This was a great start to achieve the goal of helping to 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.

From valuing nature to bringing back extinct species… read Mark Tercek’s wide-ranging interview with writer, environmentalist and futurist Stewart Brand now.

While the International Year of Forests had been observed in 2011, there was no globally-recognized date to raise awareness about sustainable forest management. In response, the UN General Assembly proclaimed 21 March the annual International Day of Forests. On the occasion of the 1st-ever celebration of the International Day of Forests (IDF), the Institute of Biodiversity Conservation in Ethiopia organized a workshop on 29 March 2013, in the highly biodiverse Bale region, Oromiya.

The IDF was celebrated in various ways. As an introduction, cultural dances and songs were performed by local people, and in particular by young environmental club members to celebrate the diverse and important values of forests, their importance in providing food, shelter, livelihoods and protecting against the effects of climate change.

Sand Martins make an amazing journey every winter from the Sahara to the UK to breed in piles of sand. This year, every CEMEX UK quarry will be creating the sheer banks of sand that Sand Martins love to make their homes in. Sand Martins live in colonies, sometimes with over 100 pairs breeding on a single site.

An inception workshop was held earlier this month in Siem Reap to launch the REDD+ Community Carbon Pools programme in Cambodia. The programme, which was initiated in June 2011, shares knowledge gained from the practical implementation of reduced emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) projects in Indonesia, Vietnam , the Philippines and now Cambodia.

With funding from the European Union, the programme is specifically looking at the pooling of multiple community forests into groups to undertake REDD+ related activities. In doing so, the groups benefit from economies of scale, saving on certification costs. Grouping also allows communities to share experiences and to learn from one another.

Perhaps one of the most well-known climate activists of our times, environmental writer Bill McKibben is on a mission to slow down the effect of greenhouse gases on the earth. Alongside his colleagues at the nongovernmental organization 350.org, McKibben has spearheaded a campaign calling upon communities, governments and universities all around the world to take action by divesting from fossil fuel companies.

On March 12th, 43 CFA members came together in a physical and virtual presentation on the challenges and collaborative Initiatives of CTFs.

The presentation was moderated by Yoko Watanabe, from the GEF. Yoko commented on the importance and innovativeness of the about 60 CTFs around the globe. The GEF has supported 44 CTFs so far for grant making initiatives, as well as for the financial sustainability of Protected Areas management.

The purpose of the UNDP Protected Area Financing Scorecard is to assist governments, donors and NGOs to investigate and record significant aspects of a protected area financing system - its accounts and its underlying structural foundations - to show both its current health and status and to indicate if the system is holistically moving towards an improved financial situation. The scorecard is designed for national systems of protected areas, but could be used by sub-national networks (e.g., state, regional or municipal). It applies equally to terrestrial and marine protected areas.

Scientists are debating whether we can truly bring back vanished species—and, if so, whether we should.

With new funding from the German government and generous grants from our individual and corporate donors, this year we will add two new parks to our programs in Armenia and Georgia and expand our pilot project in Azerbaijan. In total, CNF will be supporting 13 parks across the South Caucasus in 2013.

On Monday 6th May the European Commission launched a new strategy to encourage the deployment of green infrastructure. The strategy also revealed a clear policy signal to ensure that the enhancement of natural processes that provide multiple benefits, such as green infrastructure, becomes a systematic part of spatial planning. This is a key element of the implementation of the EU’s Biodiversity Strategy towards 2020.

With Earth Day fast approaching, it’s a good time to think about what the environmental movement has achieved over the past year. Although there’s some good news, such as the massive rally against climate disruption held in February and Beyond Coal’s success in retiring almost 150 coal fired power plants, most of it is bad. Despite the movement’s best efforts, it has failed to win federal legislation on its top priority – climate disruption, there’s broad support for the Keystone XL pipeline, the boom in fracking continues largely unabated, and Americans are getting more complacent about the environment by the day.

Ecosystem services provided by high Andean wetlands must be understood in order to ensure their conservation. Therefore, as part of the High Andean Wetlands Initiative, BirdLife International and its partners, have implemented participative exercises to prioritise those ecosystem services which would be most affected by an alteration in the conservation status of Important Bird Areas (IBAs) and Ramsar Sites within the initiative.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says America's hunters, shooters, fishermen and boaters generated more than $882.4 million in excise tax revenues in 2012, up from the $749 million generated in 2011.

The money will be distributed to all 50 states and territories to fund fish and wildlife conservation and recreation projects across the nation, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced on Friday.

Water is the silent currency that runs through the global economy. In a world of seven billion people – with three billion new consumers coming on stage by 2030 – and seventy trillion dollars of global production, vast amounts of water are needed to irrigate our crops, cool our power plants, supply our manufacturing, and support our cities.

Even though less than one percent of the world’s water is available freshwater, that is still, in principle, enough. However, it is only accessible for human use, if delivered where and when it is needed, at the right quality. Traditionally, we create access by relying only on hard infrastructure. We take water from nature – rivers, lakes, below ground – and store it in large basins, which capture floods and carry us through droughts, often delivering electricity in the process. We then transfer it via canals to fields, treat it and distribute it to homes, before collecting and sending it back again into nature.

Today, the global bill for this system is over half a trillion dollars a year.

The GEF is recognized as a strong supporter of Conservation Trust Funds (CTF). The GEF completed an evaluation of its experience with CTF in 1999. This evaluation assessed the experience of 13 funds. Following this evaluation, the GEF developed an internal document, the “GEF finance for biodiversity conservation trust funds, a checklist”, aiming to provide clarification on the standard practices on the use of GEF finance for CTF. In 2008, the GEF undertook, with other partners, a Rapid Assessment on CTFs, including the GEF financed ones.

Today, the GEF is supporting more than 44 Conservation Trust Funds over the world. Considering the substantial number of projects, the long-standing experience and the different approaches supported; the capitalization of GEF experience will help to define its positioning in the coming years and to further develop strategy in the CTF development among the donor community.

The Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund (CEPF), which funds nongovernmental efforts to conserve the world’s most biodiverse and threatened ecosystems, has officially launched the Ethiopian component of its five year, $9.8 million investment plan in the Eastern Afromontane biodiversity hotspot.

Fauna & Flora International has received a US$5 million grant from Arcadia to support its Halcyon Land & Sea fund, which is dedicated to protecting critical areas of natural habitat.