Secured landscapes and watersheds play an important role in planetary health. They yield important “natural capital” for generations long into the future, and help buffer the effects of a changing climate. At the 2014 IUCN World Parks Congress in Sydney, the conservation community defined protected areas as one of the best investments in our future and articulated a need for better implementation efforts.
Last month, we gathered in Honolulu for the IUCN World Conservation Congress, and assessed progress on the “promise of Sydney.”
The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, through our Andes-Amazon Initiative, has supported grantees working to create and enhance protected areas and indigenous lands throughout the Amazon for the past 15 years. We understand humanity’s shared dependence on these critical ecosystems. Since Sydney, we have prioritized how best to catalyze the necessary resources for these conservation gains to endure.
As one example, we have worked with Wildlife Conservation Society to support the Indigenous Council of the Tacana People in Bolivia in implementing their community-based land-use vision for their ancestral territory in the Madidi landscape. This rights-based approach, where indigenous communities are able to determine the future of their territories, is significantly reducing forest loss across vast areas of the Andes and the Amazon basin.
Another approach, often called “project finance for permanence,” can leverage international funding to be matched with funding from in-country sources in order to establish sustainable finance and management mechanisms for large-scale conservation. These arrangements bring together multiple stakeholders—private donors, multi- and bi-laterals, NGOs and governments—around a shared objective and fundraising targets. We have witnessed the success of this model in the Great Bear Rainforest, Forever Costa Rica and “ARPA for Life” in Brazil.
In Peru last year, World Wildlife Fund, the Peruvian Society for Environmental Law, Ministry of the Environment, Profonanpe, Blue Moon Fund and the Moore Foundation signed a memorandum of understanding with the National Park Service (SERNANP) to engage decision makers and champion sustainable financing for parks. “Patrimonio del Peru,” or Peru’s Legacy, will raise ~$120 million in international cooperation funds and leverage national funding to secure 19.2 million hectares of protected areas.
And in December 2015, Colombia’s Ministry of the Environment and Sustainable Development, the Natural National Parks of Colombia, World Wildlife Fund, the Fund for Biodiversity and Protected Areas – Natural Heritage, Wildlife Conservation Society, Conservation International and the Moore Foundation signed a memorandum of understanding to achieve sustainable financing and improved management of Colombia’s national parks system.
These examples give me hope in the building momentum for expanding and sustaining indigenous lands and protected areas in the Amazon. They are strong indicators that we will help deliver on the “promise of Sydney,” so that future generations will be able, as we are, still to marvel at the wonder of the Earth’s largest remaining rainforest—and to celebrate the cultural and biological diversity within it.
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