Tor green list sustainable Financing

**TERMS OF REFERENCE**

**Establishing and Optimising the Sustainable Financing**

**Mechanisms for the IUCN Green List of Protected and Conserved**

**Areas
**Projects**:The IUCN project for 30x30 Challenge and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation

and IUCN Strategic Partnership project: Achieving and recognising fair and effective Protected

and Conserved Areas through the IUCN Green List Standard

**A. Background information**

The global conservation agenda underlines the importance of expanding protected and

conserved areas as a way to halt biodiversity loss. But to deliver conservation outcomes, a

shift towards quality issues is also required in addition to quantitative targets.

Addressing this issue is the mission of the **IUCN Green List Protected and Conserved Areas**

(GLPCA), the first global and unique Standard of best practice for area-based conservation.

The Green List Standard aims to become the metrics for area-based conservation

effectiveness, providing a global benchmark for how to meet the environmental challenges of

the 21st century, and in particular the post-2020 targets.

The IUCN Green List is also a programme of certification for protected and conserved areas

(PCAs) that are effectively managed and fairly governed. It acts as incentive and offers a

stepwise programme that can help make PCAs fit for the future and thus secure past

successes and future investments. Enrolled sites become part of a network and benefit from

technical support on how to improve their performance and impacts.

The 30x30 target is a global target which aims to halt the accelerating loss of species, and

protect vital ecosystems that are the source of our economic security. More than 100 countries

are committed globally to increasing spatial targets to protect or effectively conserve at least

conserved areas and public and private financing are needed to ensure long-term

management and secure local governance and secure precise implementation mechanisms

to put nature recovery by 2030.

Achieving such an ambitious target (30% effectively protected by 2030) will require significant

action and resources, especially the financing sources to help countries manage the existing

PCA network and expansion. Less than 25% of PCAs have the resources to be effectively

managed1. There is an urgent need to generate and regenerate large-scale financing for

biodiversity conservation.

One of the IUCN Green List strategies is to develop an outcomes-based financing product that

allows countries to deliver upon their 30x30 commitments and ensures their PCAs network

Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 17(5).

achieves a minimum standard of fair governance and effective management. Such a product

will need to be underpinned by verifiable impact, achievable during the investment term. The

mission will be to develop innovative financing mechanisms for supporting Green List

committed sites to achieve the IUCN Green List Standard, and its relevant activities at global,

regional and national level.

**B. Project**

target of securing the 30% of the planet conserved through fair and effective systems of

protected and conserved areas. The project is securing country commitments to increase

global, regional and national investment into committed countries’ fair, inclusive and effective

area-based conservation systems, in line with the new Global Biodiversity Framework and

nature.

To support this ambition, IUCN is currently implementing Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation

and IUCN Strategic Partnership project to secure at least 1,000 equitable and effective

protected and conserved areas in places of importance for biodiversity through scaling the

IUCN Green List Standard, to offer a meaningful pathway to implement the new Global

Biodiversity Framework and 30x30 ambitions to secure biodiversity and climate benefits.

**C. Objectives**

The IUCN Green List Standard and process must be efficient and highly valued to all

participants. To achieve this, the benefits for partner agencies, conservation actors,

stakeholders and rights-holders should outweigh the associated costs of engagement.

To date, the IUCN Green List has advanced mainly through a portfolio of projects, but IUCN

will seek opportunities to generate direct financial support for participating sites based on their

commitment to achieving the Standard, and their demonstrated progress and good

performance. At the same time, IUCN and partners require sustained financing to support

Green List operations, evaluation and assurance, communications and outreach to ensure

quality and credibility in the Green List Standard and certification process.

A three-pronged approach will help move from a project-based model to a coherent and

sustained financing programme:

- find synergies between national and regional projects, and improve the allocation of

resources to Green List development priorities;
- link the capacity to demonstrate positive i