Traditional financing mechanisms (e.g., user fees, government budgets, grants and concessions) continue to be the most relevant sources of MPA financing. Improving access to these may be the first step towards a sustainable financing strategy for many MPAs. 

But solutions to create financial sustainability for conservation activities have rapidly diversified and evolved over recent years, providing multiple options for MPA management and financing entities.

Emerging financing mechanisms

Various emerging mechanisms can strengthen financing strategies. The advantages or disadvantages of each mechanism depend on the context of the MPA, so you need to carry out a feasibility assessment, covering legal, political, ecological, socioeconomic, financial, governance and administrative aspects. 

MPA managers have innovated in business models and enterprises that build on highly context-specific opportunities. 

Traditional MPA finance providers (e.g., philanthropic donors, development agencies and conservation trust funds) have started to explore more complex and larger-scale arrangements involving climate finance and the private and financial sectors. 

• Innovative business models and MPA enterprises

  MPA managers have drawn on their internal capacities and the unique characteristics and context of their site to design their own business models or local enterprises to generate funds. These provide examples of how MPAs can generate funds as part of the blue economy.  
• Profitable business models 

  In MPAs that are well positioned as world-class destinations, managers have capitalized on high-end markets by implementing more profitable business models than traditional fee systems. As an example, the Belize Audubon Society, manager of the Blue Hole Natural Monument, has established a concessional agreement that generates funds from the operation of a glamping site
• Other sectors of the blue economy

  Other MPA managers have invested in their know-how and research facilities to offer commercial tests and analyses to fishing, tourism and other sectors of the blue economy. 

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The Toledo Institute for Development and Environment (TIDE) Belize, for instance, has built a successful community-based tourism programme that generates funds for the MPA and additional income for local community members.  

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Private and financial sector involvement

In impact investing, typically structured through investment funds, private capital is used to finance activities that will generate a financial return that might be lower than the market standard, but deliver a positive environmental and social impact. 

In blended finance, different sources of capital (e.g., philanthropic donations, development funding and private capital) are mixed, to lower the risks of investing in sustainable development goals among private actors seeking to receive a financial return. Examples of these can be seen in debt-for-nature swaps (like the one used for the creation of the Seychelles Conservation and Climate Adaptation Trust) and investments into sustainable fisheries (such as the Althelia Sustainable Ocean Fund), or other activities that may stimulate local economies, generate jobs and achieve conservation outcomes. While blended finance models are highly complex, the Turneffe Atoll Sustainability Association (TASA) in Belize provides an example of an MPA site-level manager that has taken a central role in initiating a partnership of this kind to mobilize private and public finance for MPA management. 

Biodiversity offset schemes, where governments or private sector actors compensate for the negative impacts of a development project by investing in positive conservation outcomes elsewhere, could also benefit MPAs. Progress is under way in a growing number of developing countries through collaboration among governments, the private sector and other entities such as conservation trust funds (e.g., FAPBM in Madagascar and BIOFUND in Mozambique).

Climate finance

In addition to traditional financing for conservation, climate finance is becoming increasingly important for MPAs. As an example, multilateral pools of funding for adaptation are being provided by the Green Climate Fund (GCF), the Adaptation Fund and the Global Environment Facility (GEF). While most MPA sites are likely to be too small in scale to receive direct funding from providers such as the GCF, their funding can still reach MPAs through country-wide or region-wide programmes, such as those approved by GCF in the Maldives, Cuba, the Indian Ocean, and Tanzania, Madagascar, South Africa and Mozambique.

Financing is also being mobilized for nature-based solutions to climate change, recognizing the importance of marine and coastal ecosystems in providing services that support climate change mitigation and adaptation. This offers MPAs an opportunity to participate in global carbon markets through emission reduction projects related to mangroves and seagrasses (blue carbon projects) or risk financing that recognizes the role nature plays in climate resilience (such as the insurance scheme developed in Quintana Roo, Mexico).