The CFA is proud to release the new report "2020 Practice Standards for Conservation Trust Funds".
Building on the original edition produced in 2014 by Barry Spergel and Kathleen Mikitin, these voluntary Practice Standards for Conservation Trust Funds serve as a tool for improving the design, management, and monitoring and evaluation of CTFs. CTFs and their donors can decide to use, aspire to, or adapt the Practice Standards to fit their particular needs. It is hoped that they will also continue to serve as a basis for greater harmonization of international donor rules, standards, and policies for CTFs, resulting in lower transaction costs and greater conservation impact.
Authors: Authors: Paquita Bath, Viviana Luján Gallegos, and Amílcar Guzmán Valladares
Joyn-Coop Releases Study on Administrative Expenses and Conservation Trust Funds
A German-based consulting firm, Joyn-Coop provided this very helpful study to Blue Action Fund in connection with its deliberations on how it should think of and account for “administrative costs”. The study was financed by KfW and presents a study of administrative cost ratios and coding of cost categories within Conservation Trust Funds.
The full study is available for download here.
Publication - Financing Marine and Coastal Biodiversity Management
Blue Solutions is a global BMU-IKI project implemented jointly by GIZ, GRID-Arendal, IUCN and UN Environment. Over the past years, the Blue Solutions project has collated many success stories (solutions) of sustainable marine and coastal management, all of which are published on the PANORAMA platform. The new booklet is one in a series of “Solution-in-Focus” booklets looking at solution case studies of a specific topic in more detail. This version summarizes 18 different examples and approaches of financing marine and coastal management sustainably from all around the world – from a regional trust fund to small enterprises. We encourage you to browse through the variety of cases and hope you will be inspired to consider some of these approaches in your own work.
Find the PDF here.
Contact: Janina Korting
New Paper; Ocean Finance: Definition and Actions
The Pacific Ocean Finance Program is pleased to release the new paper entitled "Ocean Finance: Definition and Actions."
The purpose of the paper is to define ocean finance and summarise four actions that are necessary for effective ocean finance.
The paper provides guidance for the implementation of the Pacific Ocean Finance Program, the aim of which is to increase the amount and efficacy of financial investments into Pacific ocean governance. You can learn more about the program by visiting the knowledge portal at www.pacificoceanfinance.org.
Find the PDF here.
New Report on Innovation for Coral Finance
The 2018 International Year of the Reef is an opportunity for the world’s media to highlight the many threats faced by coral ecosystems and the need to protect them. One of the main challenges faced when implementing coral conservation activities is the financing of it; the funds currently needed to achieve effective and lasting conservation greatly exceed the available funds, generating a substantial financing gap.
To explore ways of reducing this gap, the International Coral Reef Initiative releases a study of opportunities offered by innovative financing mechanisms for coral conservation. The seven most promising notions are presented. The report prompts for more integrated models, notably using a business-model approach. It introduces four example business models addressing specific coral-context challenges and how they can be used by local conservationists and decision-makers as a tool to make coral conservation sustainable. These examples are paving the way for dozens of customised coral business models still to be designed. We hope this first report will help renew the approach of coral finance.
The report is available here for download.
New Library Addition: Options and Financial Mechanisms for the Financing of Biodiversity Offsets
New Resilience/Adaptation Financing Guide for SF Bay Area
A CFA member recently helped put together a resilience/adaptation financing guide for the San Francisco Bay Area Resilient by Design challenge. The guide can be found here, on the Resilient Bay Area page, or on the CFA site.
2016 Conservation Trust Fund Investment Survey Now Available
We are excited to announce that the tenth report of the Conservation Trust Fund Investment Survey (CTIS) series has been released and is available for download. The report overs the performance of Conservation Trust Funds during the calendar year of 2016 and relies on information provided by 38 Funds from 47 countries about endowments and sinking funds.
The 2016 CTIS is available for download here as well as in the CFA Library.
New Database of Protected Areas Business Plans
Government of Seychelles-UNDP-GEF Protected Area Finance and Outer Islands projects will be hosting a Business Planning workshop for Protected Areas in Seychelles in September. In preparation for this training, they have developed a database containing over 40 examples of terrestrial and marine business plans from around the world and guidelines for their development. They hope that this is also a useful resource for other countries. The projects would like to thank all the professionals that contributed literature to this resource folder.
The dropbox link to this database is available here or through the library on our website.
Please feel free to share with colleagues, download and add more business plans.
If you would like any more information about the Protected Area Finance project in Seychelles please contact the project directly.
Environmental Funds Tool Kit Back Online
As CFA continues to move forward we are working on fixing issues with the site, and the Environmental Funds Tool Kit is officially back up and running. 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. We hope this will continue to be a helpful tool for you all to utilize in your work.
Within the toolkit there are still a few broken links that are connected to the old site. If you run into any issues with these please feel free to contact our secretariat to get everything sorted out.
The toolkit can be found here or through the affiliated page on the CFA Website.