1.Front section - IUCN

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Friends for Life: New partners in support of protected areas
Box 2.1
Madidi National Park, Bolivian Amazon, Bolivia.
The Chiquitano Forest Conservation
Foundation
The Chiquitano Forest Conservation Foundation
(FCBC in Spanish) was created in September 1999
and marks an agreement between two energy
companies (Enron and Shell) and four conservation
organizations, of which two are Bolivian
(Fundacion Amigos de la Naturaleza and Fundacion
Amigos del Museo de Historia Natural Noel
Kempff Mercado) and two American (Wildlife
Conservation Society and Missouri Botanical
Garden).
The founding members have committed US$30
million over 15 years to the FCBC. The companies
will each contribute US$2 million annually over the
first five years and will then match funds raised by
the environmental groups up to a further US$10
million. Establishment of the FCBC has proved
instrumental in mobilizing funds from other
sources. In 2002 the FCBC accepted US$320,000
in contributions from external sources and a further
$500,000 in 2003.
The FCBC supports the long-term funding
objectives of the conservation plan for a region of
more than 8 million hectares in eastern Bolivia. The
area includes the Chiquitano Dry Forest, the
Cerrado and the Bolivian Pantanal ecoregions. In
its relatively short history, the FCBC has enabled the
creation of the 242,000ha Tucavaca Municipal
Wildlife Reserve, provided incentives for
implementation of a land-use plan that integrates
sustainable-use and private reserves over
260,000ha, and facilitated the awarding of land titles
for 34 indigenous groups.
The FCBC is governed by a Board of Directors
which oversees and approves the yearly work plan
and budgets. Each of the four conservation
organizations is represented on the board and there
is one representative for the two energy companies.
A stakeholder committee, which aims to represent
90% of the regional actors, including agrarian and
forestry superintendents, municipalities, cattle
ranchers associations and indigenous organizations,
also exists.
Sources: Laine Powell (2003) and Justiniano (2003).
© Russell A. Mittermeier /Conservation International
In the last five years there has been a marked change
in the nature of corporate giving, however. Companies
have reduced the size of their philanthropic budgets,
winnowed out from portfolios gifts to organizations
the work of which is unrelated to their business, and
have aligned giving strategies with the core mission
and values of the firm. In other words, a trend is
towards ‘strategic philanthropy’ (Barktus et al., 2002;
Saiia et al., 2003).
Yet, this trend may well favour conservation.
Although corporate giving is declining, the share of
the philanthropic pie destined for biodiversity will get
larger. Biodiversity, and protected areas in particular,
is a strategic issue for companies in the extractive
industries, and thus is among the top candidates to
receive funding from ‘strategic’ philanthropic budgets
(Stewart Carter, 2003a). For example, RioTinto, an
Anglo-Australian mining company, in the late 1990s
supported over 80 charities and programmes. Today,
the company has consolidated its annual contributions
of $50 million into 12 partnerships – nine of which are
with conservation organizations (Richards, 2003).
Moreover, because companies most acutely feel the
business risks associated with operating in
biodiversity rich and protected areas at the site level, it
is at the project level that the growth in voluntary
donations will most likely be seen. Collectively,
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