PHOTO: MARILYN MCCLELLAND Sustainable Financing Options for a Marine Protected Area Network in British Columbia Sustainable Financing Options for a Marine Protected Area Network in British Columbia Contents Introduction . 3 Falling Short . 4 Public Funding . 4 Public-Private Partnerships (P3) . 5 Case Study: The California Marine Life Protection Act Initiative . 6 Private Donations . 7 Case Study: The Arctic Home Campaign . 7 Payment for Ecosystem Services . 8 Blue Carbon Offsets . 8 Marine Bioprospecting Fees . 10 Resource Use Fees . 10 Case Study: User Fees in Bonaire National Marine Park . 11 Community and First Nations Management . 12 Case Study: Gwaii Hanaas National Marine Conservation Area . 13 Conclusion . 14 Appendix 1: Summary Table . 15 Work Cited . 16 We gratefully acknowldege the generous support of the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation which has made this report possible. Vancouver Office Sointula Office #207-343 Railway St. 235 First Street, Box 320 Vancouver, BC V6A 1A4 Sointula, BC V0N 3E0 604-696-5044 250-973-6580 www.livingoceans.org | [email protected] Sustainable Financing Options for a Marine Protected Area Network in British Columbia Introduction Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are one of the most effective tools to conserve and protect marine biodiversity . There are many different types of MPAs, but all are ocean places that are set aside like parks through legislative or other means for the purpose of providing sanctuary for individual species and entire food-webs so they can recover and thrive . When planned and man- aged effectively, MPAs can shield ecosystems from harmful human practices such as destructive fishing practices, offshore oil and gas drilling and other industrial activities; they mitigate the impacts of climate change by protecting coastal and estuarine areas that serve as carbon sinks; they benefit the economies of coastal communities through businesses such as marine tourism and sustainable fisheries . Additionally, MPAs ensure that coastal First Nations can carry out traditional subsistence and ceremonial fishing (Gardner, 2009) . One of the most important factors in establishing and managing effective MPAs is ensuring that sustainable, long-term financing is available . The level of stakeholder engagement necessary for fisheries management in MPAs and the enforcement of the resulting fisheries closures can only be achieved with adequate resources and capacity . The IUCN defines protected area financial sustainability as “the ability to secure sufficient, stable and long-term financial resources, and to allocate them in a timely manner and in an appropriate form ”. 1 In Canada, MPA development and management has historically been governed and financed by the federal and provincial governments . However, given the lack of progress in MPA establishment, it has become clear that alternatives to the current model of MPA development and financing must be employed . Therefore, a combination of financing options could be considered to fund the development and management of a viable network of MPAs on Canada’s Pacific coast . 1 . https://portals .iucn .org/library/efiles/html/BP13-sustainable-financing/Part%20I-section3 .html PHOTO: GARY DAVIS Sustainable Financing Options for a Marine Protected Area Network in British Columbia Falling Short The Government of Canada has committed to establishing a network of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) in the country’s three oceans through international agreements such as the UN Conven- tion on Biodiversity, through which Canada agreed to conserve 10 percent of its marine areas by 2020 . This was confirmed at the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development (Hutching et al ., 2012) . TheOceans Act also mandates that the federal government, through Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) and other federal agencies, establish and manage a network of MPAs (Hutching et al ., 2012; OAGC, 2012) . However, Canada is not even close to meeting its com- mitments (Hutching et al ., 2012; OAGC, 2012; Robb et al ., 2011) . In a 2007 study, Canada ranked 70th out of 228 countries in establishment of MPAs (DFO, 2013a) . This is particularly true in British Columbia, where just 0 .7 percent of the province’s waters have been designated as MPAs (B .C . Ministry of Environment [BCMOE], 2009) . A 2012 report to the Auditor General of Canada listed ‘insufficient resources’ as one of the major impediments to progress in establishing MPAs . This same report asserts that establishing a national MPA network in Canada will take several decades due to a lack of funding (OAGC, 2012) . Public Funding In Canada, MPAs are largely funded by the provincial and federal governments . The 1996Oceans Act mandated that the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans coordinate the efforts to establish a national network of MPAs . Environment Canada, Parks Canada, provincial government agen- cies and First Nations are also expected to play key roles . The Government of Canada’s plan to establish a network of MPAs was further outlined in both the National Framework for Canada’s Network of Marine Protected Areas and Canada’s Federal Marine Protected Areas Strategy (DFO, 2013a). The Canada British Columbia MPA Network Strategy2 was released in June 2014; it states that funding for the B.C. network needs to be identified, and that timelines will depend, among other things, upon resources required and available. In a 2012 report by the Office of the Auditor General of Canada, Fisheries and Oceans Canada and Environment Canada stated that recent budget cuts may impede their ability to meet their mandates regarding MPAs (OAGC, 2012) . In 2013 The Green Budget Coalition, a network of 14 conservation organizations, suggested that the federal government would be required to spend a minimum of $35 million per year, over the next three years, to establish MPAs in five percent of the nation’s oceans (only half of Canada’s commitments under the Convention on Biological Diversity ) (GBC, 2014) . In the 2014 federal budget there was an announcement of a National Conservation Plan, with a budget allocation of $37 million over five years to strengthen marine and coastal conservation . That allocation works out to only $5 .14 million per year over the life of the plan, substantially less than what is required to meet Canada’s domestic and international commitments regarding MPAs . While the federal government should continue to play a key role in the establishment of an MPA network, budgetary cutbacks have necessitated that alternative funding sources be considered to supplement public funding . 2 . http://www .for .gov .bc .ca/tasb/SLRP/pdf/ENG_BC_MPA_LOWRES .pdf Canada, 2014 PHOTO: JEFF GEORGE Sustainable Financing Options for a Marine Protected Area Network in British Columbia Public-Private Partnerships (P3) There is a long history of private citizens, companies and NGOs (non-governmental organiza- tions) purchasing or repurposing land and managing it for the purposes of biodiversity con- servation . The Nature Conservancy, for example, uses private funds to purchase and set aside land with high biodiversity value to preserve it from agricultural or industrial uses . However, Canada’s oceans cannot be owned by a private entity . The federal government has sovereign and jurisdictional rights over exploration and management within Canada’s 200-nautical-mile Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) as well as the management of fishing and marine transportation activities in all of Canada’s waters . Provincial governments have jurisdictional rights for tenured activities and those waters within the “jaws of the land3 ”. Therefore, any attempts to manage activities in marine areas in British Columbia must be done with the jurisdictional authority of the federal and/or provincial government bodies that oversee the waters or activity in question . A public-private partnership (P3) is a partnership between a public government agency and a private entity (usually one or more NGO, charitable foundation, academic institution or private company) for the purposes of achieving a stated goal . In P3s, the private entity provides funding and sometimes also plays an active role in the planning and managing process . P3s can provide numerous advantages for both planning and managing MPA networks . Private entities have supplemented wavering government funds during the planning phases as well as for ongoing management and monitoring purposes (Fox et al ,. 2013) . P3s have also been shown to diversify and strengthen the technical capacity, expertise and infrastructure available from government sources (Fox et al ., 2013) . In many cases, the private entity has improved access to data and research, and the efficiency and capacity for adaptive management (Ban et al ., 2012) . Creating a management partnership can increase accountability and ensure that all members, both public and private, are meeting the stated conservation goals (Weible, 2008) . Those P3s in which control has been decentralized may be more conducive to bilateral monitoring and auditing, which could give stakeholders more trust in the process (Fox et al ., 2013; Weible, 2008) . This was demonstrated through the Natural Areas Conservation Program, a P3 between the federal government and the Nature Conservancy of Canada (NCC) for the purposes of establishing terrestrial protected areas (NCC, 2013) . Instead of managing the program directly, the government disperses the funds to the NCC to purchase and manage lands for conservation . The NCC, in turn, submits progress reports and