Projects

Nantu Forest Conservation Finance Strategy (2009)

Client: ADM Capital Foundation (ADMCF)
Partner: Yayasan Adudu Nantu International (YANI)

Project overview

The Nantu Forest is located in the Gorontalo Province of Sulawesi, Indonesia. It covers a total of 62,631 ha and includes the Nantu Wildlife Reserve, Protection Forest, and Production Forest and is one of the Wallacea bio-region’s few remaining intact forest ecosystems. Threats to the Nantu Forest include floods, illegal logging, slash-and-burn clearance, poaching for wildlife trade, and gold mining.

Challenges

YANI, established in 2002, has engaged in conservation-related activities within the Nantu Reserve, but has existed on a minimal, insufficient budget. Moving forward, YANI hopes to secure more financing to continue and expand their efforts. They believe that the use of a conservation trust fund (CTF) could be utilized to attract, channel, and add increasing amounts of funds from a variety of sources, including: tourism and media visits, government, REDD (through the sale of voluntary emissions reduction (VER) credits as part of an avoided deforestation (AD) or reduced impact logging (RIL) project), and donors.

Approach and Outcome

Starling was hired to conduct an initial assessment of the Nantu Forest conservation efforts, complete a cost and revenue analysis, and create a business plan for a Nantu Forest CTF, with the ultimate goal of helping YANI work towards financial sustainability. To do so we took the following approach:

• Initial Assessment. Achieving financial sustainability across a network of protected areas requires a clear understanding of the objectives and effective functions and activities required to achieve them. Starling therefore started by conducting an initial assessment of the three PAs in terms of their ecological profile, functional statuses, stakeholders, and threats and challenges. This helped to define the network-level objectives and functions, and also to identify existing capacity and resource gaps.

• Cost and revenue modeling. Once there was a clear understanding of the objectives and functions, Starling created a comprehensive, bottom-up, cost and revenue model which included five scenarios: status quo, minimal, optimal, REDD-AD, REDD-RIL. This included an IPCC Tier-1 carbon stock analysis to forecast the revenue potential in the REDD scenarios. Each takes into account a similar set of economic and financial assumptions but proposes different personnel, resources, and activity needs.

• Nantu Forest CTF Feasibility Report. The final step was the creation of a Nantu Forest Feasibility report to guide the overall planning and design, fundraising and marketing for the CTF.

Additional Information

• ADM Capital Foundation
• Download report (PDF)