SAVES CONSERVATION:
PARTNER WITH RAINFOREST TRUST TO CREATE PROTECTED AREAS
We partner with local conservation organizations to create new protected areas for safeguarding endangered species and exemplary intact landscapes.
Project Selection Criteria
Project Grant Applications should meet the following criteria:
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- Clear focus on creating a new protected area or the expansion of existing protected areas through land purchase, designation as a National Park or other officially recognised protected area, conversion of logging concessions to reserve, long-term land lease, or land-titling or other mechanism of providing for indigenous ownership and management with the formal stipulation that the indigenous or community lands will be managed for conservation.
- Proposed sites must be currently unprotected. Use IUCN’s World Database of Protected Areas to determine if the area is already recognized as protected (category 1-6). Exceptions: We do not consider Biosphere Reserves, World Heritage Sites or RAMSAR Reserves to be officially protected by virtue of these designations.
- Projects should have endorsement from project stakeholders, especially local communities.
- All projects are expected to obtain Free Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) of any impacted communities.
- Projects should seek to develop sustainable financing mechanisms for long-term management of the proposed protected area.
Proposed sites qualify if they:
- Protect globally significant populations of Critically Endangered (CR) or Endangered (EN) species on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species
- Preference will be given to proposed sites that qualify as a Key Biodiversity Area (KBA) under criterion A1(a) (site regularly holds a globally significant proportion of the population of a Critically Endangered or Endangered species; see page 16 of the KBA Standard).
- There must be recent, verifiable evidence that species assessed as CR or EN occur within the proposed site.
- Projects proposed under this criterion may encompass various habitat types (not only rainforests).
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- Protect an Intact Landscape according to the attached criteria
- Priority landscapes for Rainforest Trust include: Amazonia, the Congo Basin Forests, Southern African Miombo, and the islands of Borneo and New Guinea.
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- Mitigate global climate change
- Landscapes with a high capacity for carbon sequestration (e.g. tropical peat swamps, mangroves, páramo).
- Projects which substantially reduce CO2 emissions (Carbon offset eligible).
- Projects which store in perpetuity a very large quantity of carbon at a reasonable cost (e.g. designations of extensive tall hardwood forests as national parks at a low cost/acre).
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An online Rainforest Trust priority setting application that incorporates Rainforest Trust metrics can be found here. The information button (“i”) in the upper left corner will provide further detail on the metrics.
Project Review Process
Rapid Feasibility Awards
Successful applications should exhibit clear intent to establish a new Protected Area and one or more of the following:
- Assess whether a site qualifies as an A1(a) KBA;
- Evaluate land tenure of unprotected A1(a) KBAs;
- Evaluate the presence and abundance of CR and EN species within unprotected A1(a) KBAs;
- Investigate legal processes for potentially designating the site as a nationally recognized protected area or acquiring the long-term lease of gazetted land, where appropriate;
- Negotiate land prices and gauge willingness to sell privately owned land
- Assessments of community and government interest in Protected Area creation
COVID-19 Relief Support Criteria
Rainforest Trust has secured funding to provide emergency support to current and prior Rainforest Trust partners to ensure the success of conservation projects jeopardized by the pandemic. This support will be dedicated to helping maintain the staff necessary to the success of the Rainforest Trust supported projects and address any additional, unanticipated needs that result from the pandemic that will also impact this success.
Funding support is intended to help ensure that partners will be able to:
(a) continue with the project-related work of establishing and/or expanding the protected areas,
(b) continue to patrol the protected area sites in the face of increased threats and reduced income from other sources, like tourism revenue, and
(c) keep key technical staff working.
Funding support will be used for the following purposes:
- Paying rangers and guardians so that they continue with patrol and monitoring activities.
- Paying key technical staff.
- Paying for other operational and technical support essential to continue work on our joint conservation/protected area projects; could include improvements to video conferencing and other technology to assist our partners’ staff members working remotely due to pandemic-related restrictions.
- Outreach to pandemic-affected communities to mitigate pressure on protected areas from incursions, illegal logging, poaching and subsistence hunting, etc.
You will need to complete an application form describing threats, challenges and impacts. The form should include a simple budget indicating the funding need and how it will be used. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis.
Take the Eligibility Questionnaire
If you are interested in applying to become a partner, you must first complete our eligibility questionnaire. If deemed eligible, you will be prompted to download instructions to submit a concept note for initial project evaluation. Successful applicants will then be contacted and invited to submit a full application.
Follow a manual added link
