Implementation
West Africa
December 2020 – October 2021
Official project name
Development of Business Plans for RAMPAO’s Marine Protected Areas
Affiliation project
PIMFAO – Small Initiatives and Financial Mechanisms for the Conservation of Marine and Coastal Biodiversity in West Africa
Financing
Coordinator(s)
Partner(s)
Project background
Under-funding for West African protected areas
Even though the number of protected areas in West Africa is increasing, there are still not enough funds available to meet their management requirements. The lack of a true plan for funding protected areas and the lack of efficient techniques and resources to assist in the implementation and oversight of existing mechanisms are two of the main causes of this underfunding.
Protected areas cannot accomplish their goals of preserving biodiversity and upholding the ecosystem services that support the welfare of the local populations without sufficient funding. Protected areas must be incorporated into long-term planning and funding plans in order to be managed successfully.
There is a lack aggregated information regarding the funding deficit for protected areas in West Africa. Since they receive funding from a variety of sources, it is challenging to obtain a comprehensive picture of the situation.
BlueSeeds and Baastel have collated the business plans of 37 West African protected areas to uncover the overall lack of funding for conservation in the region.
Project background
Training West African protected area managers
BlueSeeds and Baastel have made it possible for the Regional Network of Marine Protected Areas in West Africa (RAMPAO) to gather important information on the funding situation for protected areas in the region, thanks to the PIMFAO project.
Protected areas must be incorporated into long-term planning and funding plans in order to be managed successfully. Through two to three-day training sessions in each of the following countries, BlueSeeds and Baastel assisted the managers of 37 protected areas in West Africa in creating their business plans: in The Gambia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Mauritania, and Senegal.
To ensure realistic management and development of protected areas, we assisted them in planning medium- and long-term financial requirements, identifying current funding sources, and combining the financial data available for each protected area.
Our achievements
Assessing the financing gap of conservation in West Africa
The business plans of the 37 protected areas in question were combined by BlueSeeds and Baastel. This made it possible for us to evaluate the total amount of money lacking for West African marine conservation. This study is the most thorough on the region’s protected areas’ financial requirements to date. Through this work, the RAMPAO will be able to establish a regional funding strategy for marine conservation in West Africa in addition to adopting pertinent and suited funding guidelines for MPA managers at the local level.
An estimated 6 million euros will be needed to close the funding gap in order to accomplish the conservation goals outlined in the management and development plans for the protected areas in the RAMPAO network between 2022 and 2030. The need to establish new MPAs in order to achieve the 2030 targets of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, which was signed in 2022, is not included in this estimate.
The IUCN published the State of West African Marine Protected Areas 2022 in 2024, which included the information emphasized by BlueSeeds and Baastel. Effective financial strategies must be put into place in order to close the funding gap for marine conservation in a sustainable manner.
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