Sustainable Protected Area Financing options and steps with Mary Boni

In this INA Seminar Environmental and Human Rights Lawyer examines the practical options for more substantial and sustainable financing of protected areas in Papua New Guinea. PNG is one of the world’s major global hotspots for land and marine biodiversity, as well as playing an important role as a carbon sink in both its forests and marine habitats.

The country was strong in its Constitutional commitment for safeguarding its natural resources, and innovative in its 1978 legislation to enable protected areas to be established by communities themselves. Yet, over the years, beyond the 1980s, very little resourcing has been provided by the PNG Government through the Budget process for managing the few national parks, or supporting communities in safeguarding the many protected areas they have established different habitats across the country.

National and international NGOs have provided the backbone of support over the years, gaining support from various international sources, with some businesses in the tourism industry and resource companies making contributions for biodiversity research and contributing to protected areas, usually in their own backyard, as part of their social and environmental obligations, or to safeguard the habitat upon which their own tourism business is based. But this funding has been inconsistent, as in PNG tourism numbers are small and intermittent, resource projects are intermittent and sometimes disrupted, and global funders can be fickle , wavering around market conditions and prevalent global focii. PNG’s own issues of governance and administration has also created uncertainty, and discouraged some of the international funding since the early 2000s, that was more prevalent hitherto.

Mary Boni has been with a small team working out of INA over the past year with partners, CEPA, WCS and UNDP, in consultation with key stakeholders (from Government, Private Sector and Civil Society – including members of the newly established PNG Environmental Alliance) in assessing the practical options for more substantial and sustainable financing and seeking to lay out the specific policy and legal requirements to enable progress to be made over the next months and years.