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Good practice Imported

The Caribbean Biodiversity Fund: A Regional Endowment for Protected Areas

Saint Lucia · Castries · See the Saint Lucia profile · See the Castries profile

Evidence: Descriptive / self-reported Top 32% 53/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

Founded in 2012 under the Caribbean Challenge Initiative, the CBF pools donor and government capital into a regional trust; reporting puts its endowment at ~US$94M by 2023 (up from US$31M in 2016), funding ~100 projects across 15 member countries.

US$94 million (up from US$31M in 2016)
Combined endowment (2023)
~100
Conservation/climate-adaptation projects supported
13 (>US$8 million)
Saint Lucia projects funded (by end 2023)
The Caribbean Biodiversity Fund: A Regional Endowment for Protected Areas

Details

Maturity
Established
Promoter
Caribbean Biodiversity Fund (CBF)
Period
2012–ongoing
Keywords
conservation finance, protected areas, climate adaptation, endowment fund

Context

The Caribbean Biodiversity Fund was established in September 2012 as the regional financing vehicle for the Caribbean Challenge Initiative, launched at CBD COP-9 (2008) to protect at least 20% of members' marine and coastal habitats by 2020.

Activities

The CBF pools contributions from national governments, bilateral donors (including Germany's KfW and France's AFD/FFEM) and philanthropic partners into country-specific and regional funding windows across 15 Caribbean member nations.

Results

UNDP's BIOFIN finance-tracking initiative puts the CBF's combined endowment at around US$94 million in 2023, up from US$31 million in 2016, crediting the Fund with supporting roughly 100 conservation and climate-adaptation projects; Saint Lucia alone reports 13 funded projects worth over US$8 million by end 2023.

Conclusions

The CBF's own fact sheet confirms founding year, membership and mandate but does not itself publish a consolidated, audited asset figure or project count, so these figures should be read as third-party BIOFIN estimates.

Implementation
Indicative cost
High (€500k–€5M)
Time to results
Long (> 3 years)
Staffing & skills
Caribbean Biodiversity Fund board and member-country trustees

Conditions for success

  • multi-donor, multi-country pooled endowment structure

Common failure modes

  • no consolidated, audited asset or project figures published directly by the Fund

Commonly funded by

Philanthropic / foundation funding National / regional programmes

Indicative funding routes for practices of this type — always check each programme's current calls and eligibility rules.

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Data sources

Where this practice's information was retrieved from, and when.

Attachments

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