Walia Special Edition on the Bale Mountains (2011) - Zoologische ...

conservation and sustainable use of natural resources (Scherl, et al. 2004) Currently, approximately
12% of the global land surface is protected (Emerton et al. 2006). This is a huge increase in PAs
over the past four decades, with 2.4 million km2 being protected in 1962 and 20 million km2 in 2004
(Emerton et al. 2006). Both international and domestic funding has struggled to keep up with this
increase in PAs and the relative global investment in biodiversity conservation has declined.
Moore et al. (2004) found that $364/km2 and $574/km2 is needed for the effective management
of Afro-montane forest and Alpine moorland respectively. In 2004 the Ethiopian government was
providing approximately $30,000 including salaries ($8500 excluding) resulting in $13/km2 and $4/
km2 respectively for park management to the Bale Mountains National Park (BMNP). In 2008 this
increased to a total of approximately $50,000 including salaries ($18,000 excluding) resulting in $23/
km2 and $8/km2 respectively for park management. In 2009, the newly established federal Ethiopian
Wildlife Conservation Authority (EWCA) took over the management of the park, and although it
is thought that approximately ETB 1,000,000 (approximately $77,000) excluding salaries will be
provided to the park for its management, equating to approximately $35/km2 , this is still below the
recommended amount. A detailed gap analysis was carried out for the BMNP (Kinahan 2010), and
revealed that even with new improved government funds there still remains a large gap between
the funds needed and the funds available, with an 84% and 77% funding gap between optimal and
critical requirements respectively or a 54% and 34% (optimal and critical) taking current external
funds into account as well.
In order to try and reduce these gaps PA managers globally, including the BMNP, are now
developing Business and Financial Management Plans. The emergence of markets and payments
for ecosystem services is becoming an increasingly important potential financial strategy for PAs
worldwide.
Payment for ecosystem services and carbon trading
Payments for ecosystem services (PES) are market mechanisms that can help finance conservation
efforts. They also have the potential to deliver socio-economic co-benefits. They are voluntary
schemes where well-defined ecosystem services are ‘bought’ from a ‘provider’ who secures the
supply of the ecosystem service such as clean water, soil protection, or carbon storage. PES are
becoming an increasingly popular strategy to examine as a means of meeting conservation financing
needs. Within these, the carbon markets are unequivocally the most advanced and most investigated.
Carbon markets use baseline-and-credit schemes whereby credits are generated by either
sequestering additional amounts of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere or by preventing their
release into the atmosphere compared to a reference, or business-as-usual scenario. One potential
way to achieve this that is directly in line with conservation management actions is through avoided
deforestation projects or REDD projects (Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation).
REDD projects generate carbon credits by averting carbon dioxide (CO ) emissions into the
2
atmosphere through the reduction or prevention of deforestation and degradation that otherwise
would occur in the absence of such a project. REDD is a means to realise the financial value for
the carbon stored in forests particularly for developing countries where the majority of intact forest
<strong>Walia</strong>-<strong>Special</strong> <strong>Edition</strong> on the Bale Mountains 296