A marine alliance is pushing for system-wide change to financing marine protected areas (MPAs), as a site-by-site approach is not working, an executive has said.
The global uptake of ‘30×30’ commitments, to protect 30% of land and sea by 2030, has shifted attention towards financing at scale, said Michael McGreevey, senior director of long-term finance for the Blue Nature Alliance.
Managers of MPAs face significant challenges in securing the long-term financing required for maintenance, attendees said during a webinar hosted by The Nature Conservancy’s Reef Resilience Network last week.
Achieving 30×30 for seascapes will mean raising billions of dollars annually, said McGreevey. The alliance has 100 partners across public, private, and non-profit sectors collaborating on projects covering more than 20 million square kilometres of ocean globally.
“Trying to get there site-by-site is striking more people as unrealistic. If we try to come up with a bespoke conservation finance solution for this single MPA, and then a slightly different one for another MPA, we’re probably not going to meet our 30×30 ambitions.”
“[A single-site approach will] discourage countries from fulfilling those ambitions, because they’re not going to see the financing path, and it’s just going to take too much time to get there.”
Blue Nature Alliance is focusing on approaching conservation finance across nations in its Marine 30X30 Finance initiative, launched earlier this year with the Minderoo Foundation.
“There is a hope to pilot that approach in several countries in the near future … rather than looking at individual sites, we would be looking at the entirety of the blue economy, of ocean governance and conservation finance, all taken as a holistic view,” said McGreevey.
The initiative is set to release a guide shortly, he said.
Its principles include:
- Government-led
- Work with other governments
- Finance collectively though a network
- De-risk investments through a diverse portfolio
DIVERSIFY FINANCING
The webinar also tackled the practical financial needs for marine conservationists.
Relying on a single funding source, such as government grants, can be “very risky” for MPA managers, said Allen Cedras, CEO of Seychelles Parks and Gardens Authority.
“It is essential that managers diversify the funding to ensure financial stability,” said Cedras.
These could include crowdfunding, entry fees, private donations, forest products, and ecotourism, alongside innovative financing mechanisms such as debt swaps, he said.
Local communities, fishing groups, tourism operators, and other stakeholders must be engaged for a widely accepted approach, he said.
“Two-thirds of marine protected areas globally report having insufficient budget to manage their areas, and very few protected areas have a financial plan,” said Lihla Noori, capacity and learning lead for the Blue Nature Alliance.
“Despite their importance and value, it can be difficult to secure funding to support the long-term success and ongoing needs of MPAs,” Noori said.
In June, the Reef Resilience Network launched an MPA Finance Toolkit to help managers generate sustainable finance.
By Thomas Cox – t.cox@carbon-pulse.com
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