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Financing a more effective protected-area system in Namibia, a project supported by UNDP-GEF. Posted July 23, 2006 Studies to determine the economic value of, and sustainable financing for, Namibia’s system of protected areas (parks) are being undertaken as part of the Namibian Ministry of Environment and Tourism’s ‘Strengthening the Protected Areas Network’ (SPAN) Project being supported by UNDP GEF. It was found that the protected areas underpin a large portion of the national tourism industry, which is one of the four biggest contributors to national income. Although tourism attributable to the presence of parks generates considerable tax revenue for government, and contributes significantly to poverty reduction, the parks themselves generate relatively little direct revenue from park use and accommodation fees. These direct revenues amount to less than half of park operating costs. The park system is characterized by severe under-financing, particularly with regard to the capital budget. A vision for the effective development of the parks system has been formulated and cost-benefit analysis showed that investment in this development would yield very positive results. Current funding for parks would need enhanced financing and several potential ways in which increased and new funding could be secured are being investigated. One strategy is to motivate for large increases in government and donor finance for park development and management. This could likely be achieved by demonstrating that increased investment in parks will generate very significant economic returns. In the past, parks have been seen by decision makers as contributing little to income and employment. A second and important strategy is to harness the significant capacity of the private sector and local communities to invest in and manage parks and adjacent linked areas. Essentially this would involve removing the policy and institutional barriers preventing such investments. Devolution of government responsibility for investment and management in wildlife and parks and adjacent landholdings is key to this strategy. A third strategy would be to create savings on current expenditures by improvements in planning and allocation as well as restructuring, particularly in the case of state enterprise. The aim here would be to improve the economic efficiency of government’s expenditures and to make them more responsive to biodiversity conservation needs and long-term market demand. A fourth way of accessing finance for the parks is through increasing direct revenues. Here, capturing more of tourists’ willingness to pay for park use and conservation through innovative pricing and payment systems is important. Pricing structures which differentiate according to tourist market segments and payment systems which reward loyalty are being further investigated.
USAID Participates in Debt-For-Nature Agreement with Paraguay, Posted June 10, 2006 The Governments of the United States of America and the Republic of Paraguay today concluded agreements to reduce Paraguay’s debt to the United States by nearly $7.4 million. In return, Paraguay has committed these funds over the next 12 years to support grants to conserve and restore important tropical forest resources in the southern corridor of the Atlantic Forest of Alto Parana. Special attention will be given to consolidating and enhancing protected areas within the San Rafael National Park Reserve, which contains the richest diversity of native plants and animals in Paraguay. The debt treated under this deal comes from old loans owed to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). The agreements were signed by U.S. Ambassador to Paraguay James Cason and Paraguayan Minister of Finance Ernst Bergen, Minister of Foreign Relations Leila Rachid, and Minister of Environment Alfredo Molinas. President of Paraguay Nicanor Duarte Frutos signed the agreements as guest of honor. The debt-for-nature agreements were made possible through a contribution of nearly $4.8 million from the United States under the Tropical Forest Conservation Act (TFCA) of 1998. For more information on the Tropical Forest Conservation Act and its sister program, the Enterprise for the Americas Initiative, please visit their website at http://www.usaid.gov/our_work/environment/forestry/tfca.html Promoting Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) and Other Sources of Sustainable Financing for Rural Conservation and Development: A 2004-2007 WWF Initiative for Capacity Building and On-the-Ground PES Projects, Posted March 6, 2006 With funding for natural resource management dwindling, a variety of payments for environmental services (PES) schemes have emerged as potential sources of sustainable financing. Yet thus far, most PES schemes are small in size, cumbersome to manage and are not rural-poor friendly. This WWF initiative addresses those limitations by focusing on how to scale-up current PES experiences so that they deliver substantial conservation improvements and rural poverty alleviation . Because the issue of scaling-up is at the core of this Sustainable Financing / PES project, we are supporting efforts from the local to multinational levels. For instance, during 2005 we (a) supported a micro-level PES in Central America's Sierra de las Minas where, at the same time, deriving lessons of replicability at a macro level and (b) in the Lower Danube supported national level PES schemes in Bulgaria and Romania while supporting demonstration cases at the local level. Overall, WWF is creating means by which PES can become part of a new paradigm to secure a new rural-to-urban contract - by compensating rural areas for their role in preserving critical ecosystem services, which urban areas rely on, and thus delivering both rural livelihood improvements and conservation of ecosystem services. You can read more about this initiative here and more about PES work in Europe here. A new UNEP/GEF Project, Posted March 5, 2006 UNEP/GEF has been very active promoting conservation finance-related GEF projects. For example, the GEF Secretariat has just endorsed a UNEP/DGEF one million dollar Medium Size Project with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF): "Promoting Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) and Related Sustainable Financing Schemes in the Danube Basin." This project was developed by WWF's Danube-Carpathian Program Office and the WWF Macroeconomics for Sustainable Development Programme, with support from WWF's European Policy Office and the WWF Freshwater Programme. This grant will provide a backbone for WWF's freshwater, agriculture, and business-related initiatives in the Lower Danube for the next 4 years, supporting existing work related to agri-environmental payments and the Danube River Basin Management Plan. The grant will also assist in spearheading efforts to work with the private sector and develop economic mechanisms for conservation, such as the existing work in Maramures through the One Europe More Nature initiative. The project also includes capacity building, communications work, and extension of lessons learned to other major river basins. For more information, read these two flyers on the project: Why the Danube Basin and The Goal of the Project. Training on Vilm Island, Posted February 14, 2006 Read about
CFA Training in action on Vilm Island - a collaborative
venture between the CFA and the German Federal Agency for Nature
Conservation! Read all the
presentations
from this workshop! Read about a unique
project taking
place in Northern Eurasia, funded by the GEF. |
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Conservation Finance Guide |
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