by: ALEHIA THERESE ABUAN
PARAÑAQUE CITY, (PIA) -- The ASEAN Member States are working to address their needs and gaps in funding biodiversity conservation activities in protected areas. Several sustainable mechanisms, such as carbon financing and payment for ecosystem services have been identified to bridge these gaps.
ASEAN Centre for Biodiversity (ACB) Executive Director Theresa Mundita Lim said that although funding remains a challenge, sustainable finance mechanisms to address protected area needs are within the reach of the ASEAN region.
“While much progress has been achieved in addressing the challenges in funding protected areas in the ASEAN, the work ahead may require us to establish means to incorporate biodiversity considerations into the overall budgetary systems,” said Dr. Lim in her opening remarks at the third session of the webinar series on sustainable financing for ASEAN Heritage Parks last week.
The webinar series is being organized by the ACB in cooperation with the European Union, German Development Bank (KfW), and Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) through the Biodiversity Conservation and Management of Protected Areas in ASEAN (BCAMP) Project, Small Grants Programme (SGP), and the Institutional Strengthening of Biodiversity Sector in the ASEAN II (ISB II) Project, respectively.
Biodiversity Management Bureau (BMB) Assistant Director Amelita Ortiz of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources in the Philippines shared that the realignment of domestic and subnational government budgets to the pandemic response and reduced revenues from tourism and other activities in the protected areas have made the sustainable financing of protected areas even more challenging.
“We need to shift our paradigm to focus not only on how much and where the money comes from but on creating more inclusive and enabling financing conditions,” Ortiz said.
Carbon financing
In ASEAN, Indonesia and Cambodia are leading the REDD+ or Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation "plus" conservation project of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which creates incentives for protecting, conserving, and restoring forest ecosystems in developing countries by valuing their carbon sequestration, storage, and other services.
Wildlife Works Regional Director of Asia Brian Williams in his presentation said that under the programme, Indonesia and Cambodia have sold the voluntary carbon credits with almost 30 million tonnes of emission reduction valued at USD 150 million.
In Cambodia, the carbon credits and the income generated from Kao Seima Wildlife Sanctuary and Southern Cardamom National
Payment for ecosystem services
Other funding sources such as tourism fees, concessions with private partners, grants from corporations, and establishment and capitalisation of conservation trust funds, can contribute to solving the biodiversity financing conundrum.
Dr. Lim stressed that involving industries, which are key players in creating a nature-positive scenario, can have significant contributions by mainstreaming biodiversity into their development business processes and creating a business environment that facilitates conservation and regeneration of biodiversity and reduces risks to sustainability.
At the webinar, representatives from the Philippines and Viet Nam shared their respective mechanisms in sustainably financing the effective management of protected areas.
The Philippine government augments the resources needed to implement its National Integrated Protected Areas System through the Integrated Protected Area Fund (IPAF), which was created to institutionalise payment for ecosystem services and ensure that revenues generated from the protected areas will be invested back to biodiversity.
Ryan Cuanan, chief of Community Management and Sustainable Financing section of the Philippines’ BMB, said to date, 70 per cent of protected areas in the Philippines have established their own IPAF and around USD 200 million (P1 billion) have been collected since the creation of the IPAF in 1996.
In Viet Nam, Pham Hong Luong, director of Cat Tien National Park said through the Payment for Forest Environmental Services mechanism, which started in 2008, the compensation for ecosystem services coming from hydropower companies, clean water suppliers, aquaculture industry, ecotourism industry, goes back to biodiversity conservation.
Drawing the participation of the representatives from the ASEAN Member States, the webinar highlighted the need to invest in biodiversity, most especially in line with the efforts of the region to build back better and recover from the COVID-19 pandemic.
The recorded live stream of the webinar can be accessed on the ACB’s Facebook page.
(ACB/PIA-NCR)
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