In an event held at the Chile Pavilion at COP27, together with the Minister of the Environment, Maisa Rojas, and members of civil society, this environmental fund, which seeks to mobilize and manage resources for nature conservation in Chile, launched the program for the effective management of Chile's marine protected areas.
With 83,500 kilometers of coastline, including the islands and fjords of Patagonia, Chile has a great urgency to address the challenge of effective conservation of marine and coastal ecosystems; in addition to protecting the active role of the ocean as a regulator of the planet's thermostat, absorbing a third of greenhouse gas emissions, one of the main causes of the climate crisis. Chile's Marine Protected Areas System is the fifth largest in the world, covering 43% of the country's Exclusive Economic Zone.
It is in this context that Fondo Naturaleza Chile launched in the middle of COP 27 the Marine Protected Areas Program, in an event held with the Minister of Environment, Maisa Rojas; Yacqueline Montecinos, coordinator of biodiversity and ocean policies of WWF Chile; Leo Prieto, founder of Lemu and member of the board of Fondo Naturaleza Chile. The launching was made by Eugenio Rengifo, executive director of Fondo Naturaleza Chilewho moderated the panel discussion.
"The Marine Protected Areas Program of Fondo Naturaleza Chile seeks to help the effective conservation of our Marine Protected Areas. Chile is the fifth country with the most marine protected areas within its exclusive economic zone and with this funding the idea is that we move towards effective protection", explained the Minister of the Environment, Maisa Rojas, from COP27. "If we do this, together with the State, we hope that it will be an example and can be replicated for other countries in the region to achieve effective protection of 30% of nature by 2030, as is our commitment to the Convention on Biological Diversity", she added.
This is a program that integrates an effective management plan in marine protected areas (MPAs) to reduce the degradation of these ecosystems; strengthen adaptation to the effects of the climate crisis that affect them, both marine biodiversity itself and human communities; contribute from the MPAs to blue carbon initiatives; and also provide sustainable development opportunities to these communities linked to the ocean. In the case of marine protected areas alone, the budget shortfall for their operation in 2020 was 96% (-$7,607 million Chilean pesos), so one of the urgent tasks of the Nature Fund Chile is to seek funding to contribute to the financial sustainability of Chilean conservation in the long term. This fund works to develop different programs designed to address national conservation priorities.
"Chile today can advance in reducing the funding gap for effective conservation through the environmental fund Fondo Naturaleza Chile, which meets the highest standards that will mobilize and manage public and private resources for nature conservation in Chile, strengthening communities and civil society organizations," explained Eugenio Rengifo, executive director of Fondo Naturaleza Chile. "Since COP27 we launched the dream of achieving effective conservation for our MPAs and reach the goal of 350 million dollars for the next 10 years that will give us the opportunity to bring these resources to the territories and thus deliver financial sustainability to communities working with marine conservation," he added.
"This program consists of a mechanism for channeling funds for the effective implementation of our MPAs, in order to bring benefits to humanity (...), but also conservation benefits to the species of our marine environment.), but also conservation benefits to the species of our maritorio from the great whales that have a tremendously important role in CO2 capture to the cold water corals found in Chilean Patagonia and thus be able to show the world how Chile makes its contribution at a local national global level in terms of climate change and conservation of our oceans", said WWF Chile's biodiversity and ocean policy coordinator, Yacqueline Montecinos.
"It is important to understand that when we talk about biodiversity, we are not only talking about taking care of these species, but also the functions they have in the ecosystem, including critical functions to curb the climate crisis," said Leo Prieto, a member of the board of Fondo Naturaleza Chile and founder of Lemu.
A key pillar of Fondo Naturaleza Chile's work model is collaboration. Thus, the Marine Protected Areas Program launched at COP27 was worked on by the Ministry of Environment, SERNAPESCA, Oceana, WCS and WWF.
More information: www.fondonaturaleza.org
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Contact: mhess@fondonaturaleza.org
