…a world in which 30% of the Earth‘s land and water is actually under protection by the year 2030.

 

Protecting biodiversity is essential to mitigating the impacts of climate change, conserving species, and ensuring healthy ecosystems that benefit people and wildlife. That is why funding for conservation must increase rapidly to ensure that the remaining forests, landscapes and species can thrive. Africa is home to 25% of the world's remaining biodiversity but has access to only a small fraction of global biodiversity conservation funding. To tackle this challenge, commitment must come from the public, philanthropic and private sectors. We need to improve our understanding of the value of nature, and we need new mechanisms to make investing in conservation more efficient. That is why we at African Parks are developing a transformative results-based funding mechanism by introducing Verified Nature Units (VNUs). Our goal is for VNUs to become valuable, investible assets that can be used to fund conservation. This, we hope, will shape the future of conservation finance.

 

A VNU represents 1 square kilometer of nature that is maintained in its current state or better state. It is evidenced by both habitat intactness and an indicator species assessment. This means that by implementing conservation activities, we will generate VNUs. As traceable measurements of our impact, VNUs can be translated into contractual rights that can be acquired and held by anyone interested in making nature-based impactful investments. We believe that this outcome-based mechanism will not only allow us and our donors to better keep track of our work, but also to bring in new funding sources in the future.

 

We are developing the VNU approach for three national parks: 1) the Garamba National Park in the Democratic Republic of Kongo which after decades of poaching and degradation has become a region of stability for wildlife and communities, 2) the Odzala-Kokoua National Park situated in the Congo Basin, the largest carbon sink and second-largest tropical rainforest in the world and 3) the Zakouma National Park in Chad, which is a key zone to a 245,000 km² conservation area spanning across central Africa. In these parks we are implementing conservation activities such as wildlife monitoring, species reintroduction, human-wildlife conflict mitigation, among others.

 

Your donation will help us promote effective biodiversity conservation that benefits communities and wildlife in these three vital ecosystems. It will also support us in developing our transformative results-based financing mechanism (Verified Nature Units). For every amount contributed to our project, VNUs will eventually be created that you can track. By doing so, you will help us take conservation funding to the next level of transparency and efficiency.

African Parks is a non-governmental organisation based in South Africa that works to conserve and restore Africa's last wild landscapes. Since our foundation in 2000, we have pioneered conservation action by managing 20 million hectares of land in a total of 22 national parks. By 2030, we aim to restore a total of 30% of Africa's vital ecosystems. As part of a comprehensive conservation strategy, we have already identified 161 anchor landscapes whose protection will be critical to achieving the 30by30 target.