Sustainable Financing Through the Project Finance for Permanence Model
The PFP model is a sustainable financing tool that enables governments, Indigenous peoples, and local communities to work with funders and non-governmental organizations to secure long-term management and financing for conservation areas through a single closing agreement. Each PFP project is guided by comprehensive conservation and community development plans, alongside rigorous financial models. All commitments are guaranteed upfront, ensuring durable, long-lasting results.
A hallmark of the PFP model is its multi-party commitment, which unites all participants in a collaborative agreement based on shared conservation goals, community development plans, and pledges of investment. This ensures that the resources and efforts dedicated to conservation will have a lasting and transformative impact. By providing additional assurances to environmental stewards, PFPs support the long-term sustainability of protected areas.
The PFP approach moves beyond traditional conservation efforts by scaling up from isolated site-specific projects to creating expansive networks of protected areas. Alongside their environmental impacts, PFPs also promote community prosperity, cultural revitalization, and reconciliation with Indigenous peoples. This model not only secures durable conservation but also supports economic development that benefits local communities.
The PFP model is one of the most promising strategies for achieving large-scale, lasting protection of natural ecosystems. It offers a powerful solution to curbing nature’s decline while delivering robust conservation outcomes globally.
By ensuring that protected areas are collaboratively designed, locally led, nationally supported, sustainably funded, and highly accountable, the PFP approach guarantees that protected places stay protected for generations to come.
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A PFP begins by uniting partners around an ambitious vision that combines conservation with community economic development. Together, these partners develop a comprehensive financial model and budget to guide the project, ensuring sustainable funding and long-term success.
Private and public donors commit funds to launch the project, which in turn unlocks substantial investments from the national government. Donor funds are only released once the full fundraising target is achieved, and a binding agreement is in place.
This single, binding agreement—signed by governments, civil society, and donors—secures the complete set of resources, funds, and commitments needed for the project.
At closing, financing is placed into an independent fund governed by the stakeholders involved.
As the PFP is implemented, the fund disburses payments according to the agreed financial plan and performance metrics. Over time, the government increases its financial contribution, eventually taking on the full, long-term responsibility for conservation costs.
Prior to Enduring Earth, the founding partners had worked with five countries to conserve 87 million hectares of lands, ocean, and freshwater using the PFP model. The partnership was established in 2021, and since this time Enduring Earth has facilitated the agreement of five new PFPs, securing an additional 207 million hectares in durable funding for long-term conservation and community development. Because this approach does not work everywhere, a rigorous vetting process is applied – grounded in science, policy, finance, and equity. The initial portfolio of projects were selected through a suite of criteria, where funding would be invested in places that are:
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- Ecologically important
- Represent different biomes
- Have direct benefits for communities
- Are at-scale
- Represent life on earth
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Achieving durable conservation and commuity prosperity is essential for building resilience and advancing progress toward critical global biodiversity and sustainable development targets. Project Finance for Permanence (PFP) offers a powerful mechanism to help meet the 2030 goals by securing ecosystems, protecting biodiversity, and fostering community resilience. In addition, PFPs ensure equitable and inclusive partnerships and deliver lasting social and environmental benefits.
Protecting nature and biodiversity: In December 2022 196 nations adopted the ‘Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework’ at the 15th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity. The implementation of the sustainable finance PFP model is pivotal in driving progress toward the Global Biodiversity Framework’s key targets, notably Target 3 (protect 30% of lands and waters by 2030), Target 19 (resource mobilization), and Target 22 (inclusive and equitable decision-making).
By harnessing the impact of sustainable financing, we are not only working to safeguard the planet’s lands and waters, but also ensuring long-term funding for biodiversity and community development initiatives, while fostering inclusive governance structures, led through local leadership and collective action. With less than six years remaining to achieve the 2030 goals and targets outlined in the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, the PFP model is emerging as a critical source of durable funding amidst evolving financial and political landscapes.
Community benefits, resilience, and equitable partnerships: Local leadership in setting project goals is essential to establishing projects that will provide permanence for conservation. We work with Indigenous peoples – whose lands are home to more species around the world than anywhere else, protecting 80% of global biodiversity – and local communities to ensure that conservation and protection activities align with local values. Their active leadership and stewardship is paramount to lasting conservation and benefits for local cultures, economies, health, jobs, and future generations.
