Credit: Julie Larsen Maher/WCS
The Conservation Finance Alliance (CFA) announced today that the French Facility for Global Environment / Fonds Français pour l'Environnement Mondial (FFEM) and the MAVA Foundation have jointly awarded 701,114 Euros (822,315 USD) to support CFA.
"We are honored to host CFA and to be managing this generous donation made by FFEM and the MAVA Foundation," said WCS Executive Vice President for Conservation and Science John Robinson. "This critical funding will be used to take CFA to the next level in promoting sustainable funding solutions for protected areas and the world's biodiversity." WCS is a co-founder of the CFA and currently serves as its host.
The CFA is a global network of more than 600 volunteer members, whose mission is to promote sustainable financing for biodiversity conservation worldwide. Membership is open to individuals and institutions interested in sustainable finance for conservation and related themes. CFA members benefit from access to the latest information and innovations, and to a wide network of experts that can help inform their conservation finance solutions.
CFA currently acts as the Specialist Group on protected area finance for IUCN's World Commission on Protected Areas.
The CFA network is supported by generous financial and in-kind contributions from its members. FFEM and MAVA will jointly fund the next stage of CFA. Both organizations are CFA members and have a long history of working to combat the world's environmental challenges, as well as an enduring commitment to biodiversity conservation.
Among the targeted uses for the funding, CFA will hire its first full-time Executive Director and a small staff to support programming and membership. It will, build the network's capacity for administration and fundraising, and assess approaches to knowledge management and sharing to further support collaboration and cross-pollination among members. Additionally, CFA plans to create an Innovative Financing Mechanisms "Incubator" to enable members to develop new approaches to sustainable financing for conservation and protected areas.
"The CFA members are a dynamic group, and the network needed to grow and evolve to meet the members' needs for outreach, knowledge sharing, and collaboration," said Sylvie Goyet, member of the CFA Executive Committee. "We're excited by the opportunities that the FFEM and MAVA funding will make possible."
The CFA has several immediate projects underway and planned. Presently, CFA is updating a comprehensive resource guide on sustainable financing mechanisms in collaboration with the United Nations Development Programme's BIOFIN program, a CFA member. It is also launching a workshop on investment management for Conservation Trust Funds in association with the Latin American and Caribbean Network of Environmental Funds (RedLAC), and renewing a series of knowledge-sharing webinars offered by members.
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About the CFA
The CFA is a unique collaborative and global network of over 600 members worldwide, founded in February 2002 with a mission "to promote sustainable financing for biodiversity conservation worldwide." The CFA facilitates collaboration among organizations involved in the promotion and the implementation of solutions and tools to optimize capabilities for funding conservation in developing countries and is a recognized source of information and expertise and a shared learning platform for its membership, which includes trust funds, international organizations, NGOs, donors, private companies, and individual practicioners. Visit: conservationfinancealliance.org Follow: @conservfinance
About the Wildlife Conservation Society. WCS saves wildlife and wild places worldwide through science, conservation action, education, and inspiring people to value nature. To achieve our mission, WCS, based at the Bronx Zoo, harnesses the power of its Global Conservation Program in nearly 60 nations and in all the world's oceans and its five wildlife parks in New York City, visited by 4 million people annually. WCS combines its expertise in the field, zoos, and aquarium to achieve its conservation mission. Visit: newsroom.wcs.org Follow: @WCSNewsroom. For more information: 347-840-1242.
About the FFEM. The French Facility for Global Environment / Fonds Français pour l'Environnement Mondial is a bilateral public fund initiated by the French Government in 1994.
The FFEM co-finances projects that encourage the protection of the global environment in developing countries. Its co-financing is used for the implementation of pilot projects that combine environmental protection and economic development in the recipient countries. Its activities focus on the topics of biodiversity, international waters, the climate change, land degradation and desertification, persistent organic pollutants and the stratospheric ozone layer. http://www.ffem.fr – @: [email protected]
About MAVA Foundation. Founded in 1994 by Dr Luc Hoffman, MAVA is a family led philanthropic foundation, with a key focus on sustainable economy and the conservation of biodiversity. MAVA has three region-based programmes: Switzerland, the Mediterranean Basin and West Africa. The fourth one, Sustainable Economy, provides opportunities to affect global trends. Through its "impact and sustainability Unit", MAVA supports the development of the field of conservation finance, as a tool to ensure long term sustainability of nature conservation actions. Visit : http://www.fondationmava.org Follow : @MavaFdn
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