National Conservation Finance Strategy- Bolivia Case Study

This is a case study about the evolution of thinking in Bolivia on how to attain sustainability of their
protected area network. It is an interesting story because it addresses so many elements of what is
required to achieve sustainability in addition to just finances. As a country with one of the richest
biodiversity heritages in the world, Bolivia also faces a great array of protected area threats ranging from mining to deforestation (400,000 Ha./yr), agriculture (including coca), and uncontrolled fires.
Bolivia has now adopted the principle of “Parks with People”. Forty thousand people in 150 communities live in or around its 22 protected areas. Many of them are indigenous peoples. All of them are poor and use biodiversity in one form or another to survive. The management of protected areas is recognized as an opportunity to provide additional protection to traditional lifestyles while resolving land tenure disputes and income generation issues through carefully managed participatory planning processes. A recent, broadly-consulted, National Biodiversity Strategy has selected the strengthening of the protected area system as one of its top priorities. Bolivia is also one of the only countries to have gone through the design of 2 full size GEF projects dedicated to its biodiversity and in the process has completely changed how it thinks about national environmental funds.