Options open to Development Co-operation for Supporting Enviromental Funds

This study was commissioned by the sectoral project ‘Protected Area and Bufferzone Management’ of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ). The study’s objective is to describe the current international practice and discussion of environmental funds as a tool to support conservation measures as well as to discuss the experience made by and
possibilities open to German development co-operation organisations in utilising this innovative finance instrument.
The increasing interest of German development co-operation in environmental funds can be explained by the fact that the sustainability of many conservation projects is uncertain after support has ended. This is because the financial basis of running costs and the follow-on costs of managing protected areas are not sufficiently guaranteed.
Even though most projects made efforts to increase revenue by decreasing the costs involved in managing the protected area and by improving the quality of the protected area, this was usually only successful in exceptional cases where the protected area had a high touristic potential. This topic is especial-ly relevant today as, due to the new priorities of the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation
and Development (BMZ) in focal areas and partner countries, many of
the protected area projects will soon come to an end.
The possibilities open to partner governments to fill the funding gaps through
grants from government budgets are limited, especially because of the low level
of public support for conservation. Those government institutions which are
charged with the task of implementing conservation measures have to compete
with other budget lines and sectors over the increasingly scarce fiscal resources in
order to fulfil their long-term responsibilities. The debt crisis of many developing
countries in the eighties and the implementation of structural adjustment
programmes have further aggravated budgetary problems for conservation.