Donor community use of KBAs

Several donors are already heavily engaged in the KBA Programme. Both the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund (CEPF) are KBA Partners and support conservation of KBAs.

CEPF focuses its whole programme around the conservation of KBAs and it has supported the identification of many of the KBAs that are included in the current World Database of KBAs. The GEF has stated in its GEF 7 strategy that “..new protected areas established with GEF support must be globally significant, as defined by the Key Biodiversity Area standard” and is encouraging countries which receive GEF financing to identify and conserve KBAs.

Many other donors have been funding the identification and conservation of KBAs, recognising that it is important to target actions on globally important sites and populations to achieve the greatest return on conservation investments and halt extinction. USAID has been supporting KBA identification and conservation in several countries. Franklinia Foundation uses the number of KBAs established for trees as a measure of success. A greater engagement is needed over the next 10 years to rapidly identify KBAs for multiple taxonomic groups and ecosystems across all regions of the world. Doing this would develop the blueprint of spatial plans to guide conservation at a global scale and at a detail that we have not previously achieved in the conservation community.