Nearly two decades ago, the Project Finance for Permanence (PFP) model was adapted from the infrastructure finance sector to conservation, successfully securing durable protection of 89 million hectares across iconic ecosystems in the Amazon, Costa Rica, Canada's Great Bear Rainforest, Bhutan, and Peru.
Recognizing the potential to scale this impact globally and the need for coordinated, cross-sectoral collaboration, Enduring Earth was launched in 2022. This alliance unites the complementary strengths and capacity of The Nature Conservancy, The Pew Charitable Trusts, World Wildlife Fund, and ZOMALAB, working with local partners to support their leadership to deliver enduring protections through integrated strategies spanning biodiversity conservation, community development, and large-scale finance.
PFPs are built to last: they are collaboratively designed, locally led, nationally supported, and sustainably financed. Each initiative is grounded in a commitment to uphold community rights and focused on fostering sustainable economic growth, improving livelihoods, and protecting biodiversity - to ensure a healthier, more resilient planet for generations to come.
Our Goal
Enduring Earth seeks to work with all stewards of the environment to protect 600 million hectares of lands, ocean, and freshwater by 2030. Since launching in 2021, Enduring Earth has worked alongside more than 100 local partners across five PFP initiatives – Herencia Colombia, Eternal Mongolia, Great Bear Sea, NWT: Our Land for the Future and SINAA Qikiqtani – collectively securing durable conservation outcomes, strengthening livelihoods, and sustaining the protection of 207 million hectares of lands, ocean, and freshwater. Building on this foundation, we are now advancing 11 additional PFPs across 13 countries — including the first PFPs in Africa — with more on the horizon.
Building on this foundation — and responding to the urgency of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework and the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda — Enduring Earth is scaling its ambition. Today, we are advancing 11 additional PFPs across 13 countries, including the first PFPs in Africa, with more initiatives on the horizon.
These projects are locally-led and co-created with governments, Indigenous peoples, partners, and communities and will durably protect and conserve more than 430 million hectares of lands and water – an area greater than the size of India. In these places, the PFPs have become a driving force of positive change benefiting nature and human well-being.
Eternal Mongolia PFP: Launched on Earth Day 2024 by the Government of Mongolia, local herding communities, The Nature Conservancy, and others.
Great Bear Sea PFP: Historic agreement led by 17 First Nations, in partnership with the Government of Canada and the Province of British Columbia.
NWT: Our Land for the Future is an Indigenous-led PFP that will conserve 38 million hectares and secure CAD $375 million for sustainable economic development.
When a PFP agreement is finalized, it marks a significant milestone: all partners and stewards have collaboratively designed, negotiated, and agreed on nine essential components to ensure the initiative’s long-term success. What makes the PFP model unique is the single closing agreement, uniting all partners under a shared vision, ambition, and innovative funding approach.
Photo: Sunset over a northern lake in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, Canada
Nature
Durably protect and conserve lands, freshwater, and ocean
Community
Work in partnership with all stewards of the environment
Partnership
Supporting local leaders for a resilient planet
Enduring Earth is an ambitious collaboration that works with all stewards of the environment to accelerate conservation worldwide. We seek to protect and conserve our planet’s ocean, lands, and freshwater, and secure long-term financing for conservation, economic diversification, and community prosperity. This is built on a commitment to uphold the rights of people and create opportunities for sustainable growth.
This decade offers our greatest opportunity to address the crisis facing biodiversity loss. Together we can accelerate and sustain durable conservation at a pace and scale never seen before.
Enduring Earth represents one of the biggest opportunities to catalyze large-scale conservation rapidly and efficiently to meet the challenges facing the planet today and in the future.
A PFP is a financial model that brings together governments, Indigenous peoples and local communities, funders, and other partners to secure long-term conservation, full and sustained funding, and community benefits. Through this approach, protected places stay protected because they are collaboratively designed, locally-led, nationally supported, sustainably funded, and highly accountable. The strong structure of a PFP agreement provides confidence that each project will be fully funded, well-managed, and positioned for long-term success.
The PFP model fully funds large-scale conservation projects upfront and secures major commitments to conservation. Our approach recognizes that economic development and resilient communities are instrumental for conservation permanence. Enduring Earth is committed to uphold the rights of people and create opportunities for sustainable growth; working together, we have what it takes to create a better and more prosperous future.
For Durable Conservation
Project Finance for Permanence is a tool to enable governments and local communities, in partnership with funders and NGOs, to secure long-term management and financing for networks of conservation areas in the form of a deal with a single closing agreement.
Enduring Earth is a collaboration of The Nature Conservancy, The Pew Charitable Trusts, World Wildlife Fund and ZOMALAB.