The “Sustainable Financing and Management of Eastern Caribbean Marine Ecosystems” project will support long-term financing and sustainable management of sensitive marine ecosystems in the region. The US$18.872 million project is the culmination of the Project Preparation process, a collaborative effort driven by the governments of Antigua & Barbuda, Grenada, St. Kitts & Nevis, St. Lucia, and St. Vincent & the Grenadines; the Global Environment Facility (GEF); KfW (the German Development Bank); The Nature Conservancy (TNC); and the World Bank.

 

The Project will establish an unprecedented financial architecture to support the conservation and management of the region’s marine and terrestrial resources through the capitalization of a regional endowment - the Caribbean Biodiversity Fund (CBF) - and the establishment of subsidiary national-level conservation trust funds in each country. The initial capitalization of the CBF will be $32 million and includes funds mobilized by The Nature Conservancy, KfW, and the GEF. Once they are established, national-level conservation trust funds will receive a share of the income generated by the CBF endowment. In the short term, this will mean about a 25% increase over existing funds available for marine and terrestrial conservation in participating countries. Moreover, these mechanisms will attract new resources to the Eastern Caribbean well beyond the project cycle.

 

The project will also support the protection of over 100,000 hectares of sensitive marine habitat through the gazetting and declaration of new MPAs in each of the participating countries, and enhance the management effectiveness of Marine Protected Areas through the establishment of demonstration sites that showcase sustainable management practices. This is a major step forward for conservation in the Eastern Caribbean and will help those governments participating to achieve the Caribbean Challenge goal of protecting 20 percent of their marine and coastal areas by the year 2020.

 

Finally, the project will establish a monitoring system that will help resource managers in the region measure progress toward protecting and restoring marine ecosystems and the life and livelihoods they support. This transparent, user-friendly system will allow for long term monitoring, assessment and data sharing.

 

Highlights

 

The project provides:

 

1. $15,000 in technical assistance per country to develop Sustainable Finance Plans;

2. $20,000 in technical assistance per country to develop willingness to pay surveys and sustainable finance mechanism feasibility studies;

3. $20,000 in technical assistance (TNC match funding) per country to establish NPATFs in participating countries;

4. $15,000 in NPATF start-up costs, per country;

5. $5,000 per country to train each of the National Protected Area Trust Fund (NPATF) Boards of Directors; 6. $5,000 per country to train protected area staff on how to access NPATF funds (TNC match);

7. $2,000 per country towards raising public awareness of NPATFs;

8. $50,000 (overall) for marketing, messaging, and advertising relating to the project ($25,000 in TNC match);

9. $210,000 (overall) for Marine Protected Area (MPA) demonstration site activities (the two demonstration sites are Clarks Court/Woburn in Grenada and West Coast Marine Management Area in St. Lucia);

10. $30,000 (overall) for public awareness and outreach training (relating to MPAs);

11. $100,000 for exchange opportunities, to assist countries in sharing lessons learned about the effectiveness of activities undertaken at demonstration sites ($40,000 in TNC match); and

12. $50,000 to develop an ecoregional and management effectiveness monitoring platform.