Crowdfunding marine and coastal protected areas: Reducing the revenue gap and financial vulnerabilities revealed by COVID-19

Abstract

Economics provides a useful conceptual framework from which to consider the great variety of welfare improving values created and stewarded by marine and coastal protected areas. Many marine and coastal protected areas have been dependent upon international tourism revenues to cover operating expenses and fuel economic development in relatively undiversified island economies. The COVID-19 pandemic drastically reduced the flow of international tourism dollars. We find crowdfunding is a promising strategy to capture nonuse value from altruistic and philanthropic donations of beneficiaries worldwide and a means to diversify finance streams for protected area management. BIOFIN adapted the UNDP crowdfunding methodology to address an urgent and critical need for short term funding to support protected areas at marine and coastal sites in Belize, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Philippines, and Thailand that resulted in more than $2 million in charitable donations across the five campaigns in 2020-2. A common methodological approach to campaign design and implementation facilitated a comparative reflection and analysis of the five campaigns by their managers, the authors of this paper. The five BIOFIN crowdfunding campaigns varied in terms of specific need addressed, global reputation of the site, financial scale and geopolitical scope, primary sources and degree of success in attracting donations and distributing funds, leverage and staying power, and traceable biodiversity outcomes. As the first review of pandemic relief crowdfunding campaigns for marine and coastal protected areas, we hope it can serve to begin to synthesize and transfer lessons learnt to additional locations and ecosystems in need.