EXPLORE INTERACTIVE REPORT

Highlights

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Step into the world of blended finance, where public, private, and philanthropic funds unite to drive nature-based solutions forward. The Global, Green Fund of Funds Strategy, supported by the Luxembourg Ministry of Finance and powered by BlueOrchard, is leading the way.

This unique model brings together diverse sources of capital, making projects appealing to investors passionate about sustainable development in emerging markets. Dive into the infographic co-produced by the Global Landscapes Forum in collaboration with BlueOrchard to see how this approach empowers everyday investors to make a positive impact on our planet through nature-based financing.

Explore the Luxembourg-GLF Finance for Nature Platform and uncover opportunities for sustainable impact.

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Earth Skills Network (ESN) was a collaboration between Earthwatch, UNESCO, IUCN and businesses. It connected leaders from the business and conservation communities through mentoring and skill-sharing opportunities. The knowledge gained through this global network provides new resources and tools to safeguard the future of vital conservation areas.

Challenges

Protected areas are the cornerstone of international efforts to conserve biodiversity. They safeguard vital ecosystem services, upon which communities and businesses depend. Yet protected areas face a broad range of challenges with many sites struggling to meet minimum standards. A lack of key organisational, management and business skills is a contributing factor, but protected area managers rarely have the opportunity to train in these fields.

Companies have a wealth of experienced staff and devote significant resources to effective business management. However, there are often few opportunities for their managers to consider the value of natural resources to the business.

Beneficiaries

Protected area managers (at site, management authority or local government level). Business professionals from ESN partners receive training as Business Mentors.

Impacts

Cross-sector skill-sharing partnerships have many applications. The programme has partnered 52 Business Mentors with 148 staff from 51 protected areas across Africa and Asia. As well as sharpening their professional competencies, business leaders build constructive dialogue with protected areas, which helps them to increase their understanding of protected areas and environmental and social sustainability.

Most protected area managers are trained conservation professionals, which gives them a solid grounding to respond to a wide range of challenges, but means they may lack business and management skills. The challenges they must address go beyond those relating to ecosystem health and include those related to running organisational systems and processes. If a protected area lacks organisational effectiveness then it will be compromised in its ability to deliver conservation outcomes.

Companies can offer experienced staff and expertise on key methods for business management. By training business leaders as mentors, ESN can help sites to take a more strategic approach. Furthermore, ESN benefits business by allowing senior staff to understand the value of natural resources to businesses and society, and how business decisions can impact on protected areas.

Story

Mole National Park, Ghana, is a key wildlife area for elephants and antelopes and is considered an important site by Ghana’s Wildlife Division, which is responsible for all wildlife in the country and administers the protected areas. Andrew Stevenson is a Global Account Manager from Shell. With a background in strategic planning and previous commercial experience in Ghana, Andrew made an ideal business mentor for Farouk Dubiure, the Park Manager at Mole National Park.

Prior to ESN, Farouk and his team had little exposure to business planning and marketing. Andrew brought a wealth of experience and supported Farouk in these areas during the Residential Training Programme and through ongoing mentoring.

The Residential Training Programme facilitated open discussion between Andrew, Farouk and his team on the needs and challenges of Mole National Park. They worked together to write an action plan to focus on priority needs for the protected area.

Over the 12-month mentoring period, Andrew helped Farouk and his team apply their learnings and implement the action plan. Actions included:

Developing a proposal to finance the upgrading of road infrastructure and the park’s facilities to enable Mole National Park to become more accessible and attractive to eco-tourists. Through this, they secured US$ 30,000 to upgrade critical game-viewing roads.
Developing a marketing plan to increase the visibility of the park. They have since developed a new website on Mole National Park (with the support of a partner) which is helping to attract new visitors to the area. The marketing plan is also allowing them to advertise their new luxury lodge to a different customer base.

Identifying and targeting potential sources of funding to help achieve the park’s conservation objectives. For example, Mole National Park successfully sourced over US$ 130,000 from the African Elephant Fund for the conservation of the park’s elephants.

Participating in ESN has enabled Farouk and his team to further develop their stakeholder skills. The Northern Regional Manager of Ghana’s Wildlife Division commented that “The ESN programme is showing a visible impact. Since receiving mentor support, [Farouk] is networking and collaborating more with organisations and attracting more development projects for the protected area.”

Andrew was inspired and motivated by his experiences of working with a protected area. This experience has benefitted his stakeholder engagement in sustainable development.

Other contributors

Stacey Baggaley
Earthwatch Europe

Portals

This solution is published in the PANORAMA 30×30 Solutions and PANORAMA Business Engagement community.

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Access to finance is a key element of sustainable and inclusive landscapes

This infographic summarizes the main findings from the study Access to Landscape Finance for Small-Scale Producers and Local Communities: A Literature Review which identifies the factors that contribute to or hinder inclusive financing for micro/small/medium-sized enterprises and projects across sectors in ways that collectively contribute to more sustainable landscapes in the tropics.

The key factors in the design of inclusive landscape finance are landscape governance, the financial literacy of local stakeholders, access to finance technology and services, and inclusive finance facilities and associated mechanisms for integrated (i.e., multi-project, multi-sector, spatially coordinated) landscape finance.

The most frequent challenges are the types of existing financial products, the lack of livelihood assets among recipients (such as capital and income), the lack of transparency in finance mechanisms, the small scale of potential business cases, and the high risks perceived by finance providers and their customers.

Learn more about Tropenbos International (TBI) work.

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Presented by Katerina Kolaciova, Head of Voluntary Carbon Markets, Vertis Environmental Finance.

During GLF Luxembourg, Carbon Financing, Offsetting and Corporate Mitigation Strategies.

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Presented during GLF Luxembourg 2019 Innovating Finance to Overcome Current Barriers Towards Sustainable Landscapes session

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Organisation: IDH

Description: IDH promotes a vision of landscapes where sustainable production of agro-commodities contributes to the protection and restoration of critical ecosystems, while enhancing communities’ livelihoods. This vision can’t be achieved by relying solely on public funding. A key question that many organizations are struggling with, is how to structure landscape initiatives so that they attract new sources of finance.

We are aiming to provide an answer to this question, through our Production, Protection, Inclusion approach we are piloting in 12 landscapes in 8 countries. This requires working at different scales (global, national, regional, and even village-level), and with various stakeholders: governments (national, regional, district), business, farmers and communities.

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Organisation: Althelia

Description: This talk will focus on delivering scalable and replicable finance in natural capital with a specific focus on real assets, debt and growth equity strategies at the nexus between sustainable production and environmental protection.

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Presentation at the Global Landscapes Forum on 6 June 2016, in London, UK during the Dragon’s Den session.

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By Michelle Kovacevic, originally published at Forests Climate Change

Madre de Dios, a region of Peru best known for its gold fever, is not the only place in the country where a piece of land can be classified as a mining concession and farmer’s field at the same time.

Millions of hectares of land in Peru are subject to overlapping claims, giving some indication of the complexity of land-use classification and titling in the country. Decentralization is one of the reasons for this; land-use powers and responsibilities have started to be distributed across government agencies and directorates that often have competing mandates and powers related to land use.

A case in point is Peru’s Ministry of Environment, researchers and legal experts say. While it is tasked with advancing REDD+ and other environmental conservation agendas, it doesn’t have many of the powers and responsibilities necessary to fulfill that mandate (see our interactive infographic to explore this for yourself).

“Most key powers related to land-use classification, planning, titling, and permitting are housed in other ministries. This makes it challenging for the Ministry of Environment on its own to change business as usual and move the country towards lower emissions development,” said Ashwin Ravikumar from the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), author of a forthcoming report on decentralization and land-use policy in Peru.

While Peru has shown enthusiasm and increased political will to address environmental and forestry issues in recent years, it also faces challenges of balancing priorities of economic growth, poverty reduction and sustainable land use.

The national government’s priorities have become clear in recent months, with the Ministry of Finance’s approved economic stimulus package or paquetazo (endorsed by Peru’s President Ollanta Humala) aiming to set the country clearly on a path of 5% economic growth per annum in the wake of an economic slowdown associated with lower mineral prices. The package also waters down the Ministry of Environment’s ability to enforce territorial planning for economically optimized and holistically designed land-use activities.

Institutions have been set up to improve coordination and resolve overlapping or conflicting power disputes between national, regional and local governments and across sectors but have had limited success, according to Pablo Peña from the Peruvian Society for Environmental Law (SPDA).

“Some were set up with an initial excitement that has slowly faded away…they still formally exist but haven’t convened in years,” he said.

Peru will host the U.N. climate change negotiations in December, where the first draft of a post-2020 climate agreement is likely to emerge. Following intense discussion at a UN climate body meeting in June about how greenhouse gas emissions from land sectors can be addressed, it’s likely these issues will be at the forefront of the Peru meeting.

Why does land use matter?

The growing demand for resources in Peru and globally has seen the government introduce a range of policies to encourage agricultural production (palm oil, soybean) for national and international markets. This is the biggest cause of deforestation in the country and subsequently has led to an increase in carbon emissions; 61% of Peru’s emissions come from forestry, agriculture and land-use change.

Read more at Forests Climate Change

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