Turneffe Atoll Sustainability Association updates grant agency on blended finance initiatives

By Benjamin Flowers: The cost of protected areas management, like all costs, is rising, and the Turneffe Atoll Sustainability Association (TASA) is spearheading a blended-finance approach to combine tourism products and grant funding to meet that cost.

Last week, it received a delegation from the GEP Small Grants Programme and the Belize Marine Fund to update them on activities being carried out under that blended finance approach and how those activities will help to generate financing and secure predictable revenue to cover management costs as well as other substantive fees for the Turneffe Atoll Marine Reserve.

“Currently, TASA remains primarily grant-funded, but we have made great strides with approximately 85-90% of our Tourism products being consolidated. We project that we will start benefiting from the groundwork laid out by this new model as early as in the next 12 to 24 months,” TASA said.

TASA stressed that Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) worldwide face the increasingly difficult task of meeting financing responsibilities, which is put under further strain as MPAs are unable to secure budgets from short-term grants to cover basic administrative costs.

The association says that it intends to perfect the blended finance model into one that can be scaled up and used by the entire Marine Protected Areas System, to address the serious uncertainty of its and other NGOs ’ ability to sustain their conservation actions.

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