From Compass Cayman, an enlightening and exasperating article about the challenges and frustrations of securing conservation funding in the Cayman Islands:
While the Cayman Islands struggles to find money to protect its indigenous iguanas and parrots, nearly $40 million sits in a specially established Environmental Protection Fund.
The fund was set up in 1997 to acquire land for conservation purposes and other environmental projects. But in the intervening 15 years, it has mostly been used to help shore up the government’s reserve cash coffers, as well as for some infrastructure projects and post-Hurricane Ivan clean-up.
Director of the Department of Environment Gina Ebanks-Petrie said the fund had not been meant to be used [as part of the government reserve], but rather to buy land and support conservation efforts.
“The only way we will ever get conservation land is to buy it at sale market value. We realised some time ago that we would need to get some money in order to do that and for other conservation projects, not just government conservation, but for other conservation organisations, like the National Trust.
“The idea was that you would apply for grant money from the fund if your project met certain criteria. It was also envisaged to be out of the hands of government as a separate trust to be managed by a board of trustees comprising government and private sector. That is not how it has transpired,” she said.
According to the 2011/2012 Annual Plan and Estimates, the Environment Protection Fund contained $39.8 million and receives between $4 million and $5 million a year, gathered through departure taxes charged to travellers leaving Cayman via the airport or the cruise ship terminal.
Instead of being used for environmental projects, the Environmental Protection Fund is mostly used to bolster the reserve funds the government is legally required to have under the Public Management and Finance Law to run Cayman for 90 days.
Fewer grants
Because the Department of Environment and conservation organisations such as the Cayman Islands National Trust have little access to the Environmental Protection Fund, they seek external grants from abroad.“The Department of Environment over the years has had to rely more and more on grants, particularly as our own operating budget has been cut quite a lot over the last few years,” Ms Ebanks-Petrie said.
However, as conservation efforts worldwide increase, the demand for such grants is growing, meaning Cayman has more competition when bidding for funds. Cayman also finds itself at a disadvantage when asking for these funds because it lacks a national conservation law, Ms Ebanks-Petrie said.
That lack of a comprehensive conservation law, which would protect locally threatened species and land, led the UK’s Overseas Territories Environment Programme to turn down a request for funds from the Cayman Islands Department of Environment to help protect the endangered Cayman Parrot.
In notifying the Department of Environment that it would not be providing funds for the project, the Overseas Territories Environment Programme stated: “The panel liked this strong proposal, but felt that without a conservation law being in place, it would not be worthwhile to fund the work.”
More reactions like that from grant-giving bodies, as well as the possibility that some external grants might not be made available if those bodies determined that Cayman’s own Environmental Protection Fund could be used for the projects it is requesting funding for, concerns Ms Ebanks-Petrie.
I recommend that you read the full article: $40M sitting in unused environment fund.
