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Underfunding

Right now, the flow of funding for conservation globally is simply not enough to protect the natural world. Protected area staff cannot pay for critical gear needed for basic park management, species conservation programmes struggle to gain funding from year to year, and many more unprotected critical habitats need to be safeguarded but there is no money to secure the land.  

There has never been so great a need for the world to take action to save its biodiversity. Paying to conserve wild spaces now is much cheaper than paying the future costs of losing them. Failure to protect biodiversity will have expensive consequences – ecosystems will lose the ability to provide us with the benefits we rely on, such as water regulation, carbon sequestration and many others.

Estimates for funding requirements for protected areas in developing countries (where most biodiversity remains) range from $1.1 billion per year to $2.5 billion per year. And the costs of conservation are growing every year with the increasing price of land, fuel and many other commodities.

Many developing countries are also burdened by debt and find it hard to redirect funds away from urgent development to conservation of their huge reservoirs of biodiversity. One way that is showing potential for funding conservation is the emerging market-based mechanisms.

In addition, environmental issues have only relatively recently risen up the agenda in many people’s eyes. In 2007, only 5% of UK private donors gave to environmental issues. Less than 2% of the annual grant-making of the 100 largest UK charitable trusts was allocated to environment charities that same year.  We need to make the link between the future of the natural world and the future of life on earth for us all.

There is increasing recognition of the link between humanitarian needs and environmental protection. Conservation charities must work harder to both communicate the urgency of the situation and also the many benefits of protecting natural resources for the local and global community alike. This may be the only way to garner the support required to safeguard the planet's precious diversity of life. The need is urgent – we must stand up together and act now.

Find out how you can support FFI in our urgent conservation work.