Financing Strategy

Most protected areas throughout the world do not have adequate funding to achieve their stated objectives. Conservation professionals often tend to focus on their traditional strengths of park protection and biological sciences and avoid the critical role financial management plays in the effective running of protected areas. The issues of financing protected area operations has recently been addressed through the inclusion of business plans in protected area management plans. A business plan consists of two parts. The first part identifies the amount of financing required to accomplish the goals, the second part identifies viable funding sources to meet these needs in the short, medium, and long-term.

The aim of the financing strategy is to develop a business plan for the protected area system of Cambodia. The financing strategy will cover the following sections:

• current financial status of the protected areas
• current sources of income and how they will change in the future
• opportunities for increasing revenue and reducing costs

In other words: deciding WHERE we are NOW, making decisions about WHERE we would like TO BE by a certain time, and creating realistic strategies for HOW TO GET THERE. The strategy will provide the goal where the Ministry of Environment wants to be in five years time, and will describe how to achieve this.

Historically, environmental conservation has been perceived as a public service sector that must be paid for by the state. Single source income from government treasury are often not sufficient to finance the effective running of a national protected area management agency. To ensure sustainable financing a move from single source to multiple sources of revenue is required, including involvement of the private sector. Financial sustainability means more than just increasing income. It means: increase revenue, decrease costs, secure and/or increase Government grant, and secure and/or increase donor support (direct support, trust fund).

The first step in the preparation of a financing strategy, the review and analysis of the current situation (WHERE ARE WE NOW), is currently carried out by the Biodiversity and Protected Areas Management Project using questionnaires to get the base line information from all protected areas and the Department of Nature Conservation and Protection.