$1.2M to Be Disbursed in Grants
Colin Young
The forum will also provide stakeholders with valuable information on the categories which will be considered for the always coveted PACT grants. Each year the organization provides grant funding to select co-managers of protected areas to be allocated in very specific areas. Young says that this year there are three categories for funding to the tune of one point two million dollars.
Colin Young, Chairman, PACT Board of Directors
“The first area is strengthening institutional governance and institutional strengthening generally. This is a very important area based on assessments that were done by other donors and funding agencies in the country, and so we felt that one of the best ways that PACT can invest its one point two million is to assist its co-management partners who are on the front line protecting and managing our protected areas to become better prepared to perform that function. The second area that we decided that we will fund this year is financial sustainability and resource mobilization. That perhaps is the bread and butter or the singular most important issue for most of the co-managers. How can they earn enough income for them to manage the protected areas in the country? There exists a tremendous financial gap in the system. Right now combined all the entities spend roughly sixteen millions dollars a year throughout our protected areas system. However for us to do a basic level of management the so-called mission critical, the system actually requires another twenty million dollars per year for us to do a decent job. If we want to do a better than mission critical, we require forty million dollars more per year. The truth of the matter is that PACT will never be able to fund all of the costs associated with protected areas in Belize. As a result the co-management partners have to continue to assist in leveraging and mobilizing their own financial resources to assist in the management of the protected areas that they co-manage. Thus we thought that’s an extremely important area because the better we can help them to help themselves, the more money we can raise for the entire system. And those that are better at raising monies means that there might be more funds available to other partners who are not nearly as good at raising funds but who are managing important sites for the system.”
