Crowdfunding protected areas made vulnerable by COVID-19

By Andrew Seidl, Senior Technical Advisor, BIOFIN

COVID-19 severally impacted biodiversity due to the dependence of national parks and protected areas on tourism dollars. The impacts were keenly felt across the world. Monitoring and enforcement of protected area boundaries suffered, ranger jobs were lost, poaching increased and local communities lost livelihoods. Moreover, the lack of tourism caused increased threats and poaching to iconic species such as tigers, rhinoceros, African elephants, and gorillas, among others.

In the face of a serious financial crisis for tourism-dependent natural treasures, BIOFIN developed and supported five crowdfunding campaigns in Belize, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Philippines, and Thailand.  

Crowdfunding is the collective effort of individuals who pool their resources to support initiatives promoted by other people or organizations. Candid and the Center for Disaster Philanthropy (2021) found that total philanthropic funding awarded for COVID-19-related efforts during the first six months of 2020 dwarfed funding for other recent disasters. Crowdfunding is a promising strategy to capture revenues for parks and protected areas from altruistic and philanthropic donations of beneficiaries worldwide. 

BIOFIN adapted the UNDP crowdfunding methodology that resulted in more than $2 million in charitable donations across the five campaigns in 2020-2. Target budgets for these programmess varied by more than 100-fold ($17K-$2M). The (intended) use of the funds secured was typically based on either covering the salaries of those who can still execute their duties or income replacement for the restoration of the quality of the protected site. The number of people directly and indirectly affected and tangible ecosystem effects are more difficult to recover from the currently available information. 

The campaigns point to the importance of strong alliances with key government, finance sector, NGOs and other private sector partners and stakeholders to carry the message and provide external confirmation of the importance of the cause and of the validity of the campaign.

Across all campaigns, it was important to put in the preparatory work, especially on catering messaging and communications to each of the important sub-groups of donors. Relationships developed through crowdfunding campaigns can support the development and implementation of other finance mechanisms that capture other types of value stewarded by the park or protected area, such as the introduction of the park user fee in Koh Tao, Thailand. Another consequence of these campaigns was to raise awareness of biodiversity conservation and the financial crisis in parks and protected areas in the international press. 

As crowdfunding is mainstreamed to capture value stewarded by parks and protected areas, we hope to learn more efficient and effective means of replication and scaling this biodiversity finance solution to reduce startup costs and increase the delivery of needed financial assistance on the ground in the short and longer term. 

This research will be launched at 15TH international research conference - Strong Sustainability.
(link: https://www.afd.fr/en/actualites/agenda/15th-international-research-conference-strong-sustainability)

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This article is based on a journal article titled BIOFIN Finance Solution Brief: Crowdfunding protected areas made vulnerable by COVID-19

Authored by

^{Andrew Seidl 1, 2, *}, Kelly Wallace¹, Annabelle Cruz-Trinidad², Angelique Ogena³, Niran Nirannoot⁴, Anabelle Plantilla³, Arturo Mora⁵, Hannah St. Luz Martinez^{6, 7}, Sheneil Salazar^6,7, Ana Lucia Orozco⁸, Onno van den Heuvel^2
1Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado, 80523- 1172, USA. Andrew.seidl@colostate.edu; ²United Nations Development Programme-Biodiversity Finance Initiative (BIOFIN), Istanbul, Turkey; ³BIOFIN-Philippines, Manila, The Philippines; ⁴BIOFIN-Thailand, Bangkok, Thailand; ⁵BIOFIN-Ecuador, Quito, Ecuador; ⁶BIOFIN-Belize, Belmopan, Belize; ⁷National Biodiversity Office, Government of Belize, Belmopan, Belize; ⁸BIOFIN-Costa Rica, San Jose, Costa Rica

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