Sustainable Finance Specialist Working Group

About the Protected Areas Finance Working Group / WCPA Sustainable Finance Specialist Group

The PA Finance WG has been converted to IUCN’s World Commission on Protected Areas’ Sustainable Finance Specialist Group. Click Here for more Information

Area-based conservation provides multiple benefits environmentally, socially and economically. To realize and maintain these benefits it is essential for management agencies and institutions managing to have long-term adequate financing and to leverage diverse finance tools to achieve desired biodiversity outcomes and management objectives - the goal of sustainable finance. Historically, area-based conservation remains under-resourced, often overly reliant on a single income source such as donor-funding or government budgets. The development of new, innovative, and resilient sources of finance is critical if area-based conservation such as protected areas (PAs) and Other Effective Area-Based Conservation Measures (OECMs) are to reach their full potential and deliver o

Achieving global conservation and sustainable use targets will require a strategic and highly collaborative approach to identify, share, and pioneer finance solutions in an integrated manner across conservation landscapes. The purpose of the WCPA Protected Area Sustainable Finance Specialist Group is therefore to enable and empower area-based conservation actors by developing and sharing knowledge, building awareness and capacity, and promoting innovation in sustainable finance solutions.

Launch of the Global Report on Protected Area Finance Capacity Needs

The report is based on a global survey of protected area practitioners in 2019 meant to inform the work of the Conservation Finance Alliance Working Group on Protected Area Finance to develop targeted protected area finance capacity development and training programs.

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Co-Chair: Charles Besancon

Charles Besancon; Executive Committee.jpg

Charles Besançon is a conservation planner and policy specialist with over 20 years professional experience. As a trained planner for national parks and protected areas in the USA, he brought his field experience to global policy jobs with the United Nations, international organizations and national governments. He spent 6 years as the Head of the Protected Areas Programme at the UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre in Cambridge UK developing and aggregating global information on protected area systems and presenting this to global policy makers. He spent 4 years as a staff member of the Secretariat for the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in Montreal Canada coordinating the LifeWeb Initiative that assisted developing countries in leveraging funds to build and strengthen protected area systems, help ecosystems adapt to climate change and manage invasive alien species, among other issues. He has extensive experience in project and programme development, proposal writing and fundraising. He has lived in the USA, South Africa, the United Kingdom and Canada and has worked and travelled in over 80 countries. Charles is currently working as a consultant from Missoula Montana, close to intact ecosystems and scenic beauty.

Co-Chair: Candice Stevens

Candice Stevens is a green finance innovator and landscape finance and tax expert who works at creating innovative finance solutions for sustainable landscapes. Candice introduced the first effective biodiversity tax incentive into the South African protected areas network and received the UN Pathfinder Award Special Commendation for this global innovation. She heads up Innovative Finance & Policy at WFA and is Chair of the Sustainable Landscape Finance Coalition where she works extensively with multiple stakeholders and industry leaders across sectors to plug South Africa’s environmental finance gap. She sits on a number of national and international committees regarding financing and resourcing as well as area-based conservation. Candice has a background in both law and commerce with experience in innovative finance, protected and conserved area policy and expansion, environmental law, and policy-making on financial incentives and is regarded as a global expert in her field.