Increasing revenues for protected areas. A wealth of financing options

This paper aims at giving an overview of traditional and new financing mechanisms in support of protected areas. The web of life is breaking down: our world is facing biodiversity loss at unprecedented rates. Human impacts are causing the acceleration of species loss, at rates of several hundreds up to 1000 times the natural rate of species extinction, depending on the type of organisms. Habitat degradation and loss, introduction of invasive species, pollution, and overexploitation of resources are factors that determine the process of mass extinction. Protected areas obviously play a critical role in biodiversity conservation. Article 8 of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) obliges Parties to establish a system of protected areas to-conserve biodiversity, to develop guidelines for protected areas management and to promote appropriate development adjacent to protected areas. Besides agreeing on this global mandate for protected areas, through Article 8m of the CBD Parties committed themselves to cooperate in providing financial support for protected area systems: 'Each contracting party (...) shall cooperate in providing financial and other support for in-situ conservation (...) particularly to developing countries'. Current revenues for maintaining existing protected areas and the creation of new ones are insufficient. Annually, approximately USD 7 billion is spent on the creation and maintenance of protected areas around the world (Balmford, 2003). The amount required to adequately protect biodiversity is estimated to be about five times higher. The flow of revenues from traditional and new financing mechanisms should clearly be increased to mitigate the financing deficit for protected areas. As part of the solution, innovative financing mechanisms are being developed aimed at increasing the global revenues for protected areas, thus capturing the multiple values of ecosystem goods and services provided by protected areas to mankind. This scoping paper focuses on an overview of financing mechanisms in support of the creation and maintenance of protected areas comprising terrestrial ecosystems.The term 'protected area' refers in this paper to all IUCN protected area categories, including extractive reserves. The financing mechanisms are classified into six different categories, according to the type of institutional arrangement, and the dominant actor or group of actors