"Legacy Landscapes Fund has a big impact on our work"
In just five years, Legacy Landscapes Fund (LLF) has built a portfolio that contributes to the conservation of global biodiversity. On 7 October, representatives of 15 landscapes that receive funding from LLF across Africa, Asia, and Latin America presented their work in Berlin. LLF, in cooperation with KfW Development Bank, invited national and international guests to the portfolio exhibition titled Nature, Climate, People.
"Without local people, climate and nature conservation cannot succeed."
In her keynote address, Miriam Philippe, Co-Head of the Environmental Policy, Biodiversity, Forests, and Marine Conservation Division at BMZ, praised LLF for not only supporting global biodiversity, but also contributing to Germany’s climate and development goals. “LLF is an important finance-window to achieve these goals,” she said. LLF funding secures peoples’ livelihoods and important natural functions, Miriam Philippe added. She also called LLF an important pillar for cooperation with Indigenous peoples. “Without local people, climate and nature conservation cannot succeed.”
BMZ (German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development) is one of LLF’s key donors, alongside France, Norway, the United Kingdom, and several private philanthropic foundations. KfW helped to set up the funding using their previous experience in establishing several conservation trust funds.
Thomas Duwe, co-chair of the Supervisory Committee of KfW, sees LLF as a success story. “LLF’s approach is to provide long-term funding for important nature reserves. Our experience is that there is a great need for this,“ Duwe said after the welcome address of LLF’s supervisory board chair, Heiko Warnken.
By 2030, LLF hopes to support a minimum of 30 landscapes with flexible long-term financial support, in order to secure ecosystem services, fight species extinction, and support local and Indigenous communities to preserve their livelihoods. LLF brings together public and private donors for this purpose and provides programmatic grant funding for either 15 years or for perpetuity. The organization was established at the end of 2020 by BMZ as an independent charitable foundation under German law.
In Namibia, a community-managed People’s Park forms a protective corridor between Skeleton Coast National Park and Etosha National Park. Mendes Vinte, Deputy Director of the Wildlife & Landscapes Programme at WWF Namibia, presented the concept for this emerging management arrangement. “In view of increasing droughts, animals need more space, but the interests of approximately 18,000 residents in the area must also be protected. They depend on an intact environment, but also on economic sources of income.” With the support of LLF, a dialogue process with communities on the development of the People’s Park and an environmental and social action plan are implemented, Mendes Vinte reported.
"Many conservation organizations struggle from one short-term project funding to the next. We give them security for 15 or even 50 years. That's incredible."
Simon Chaplin, Chief Executive Officer at Arcadia and member of LLF’s Supervisory Board, highlighted the security associated with LLF funding for the management of protected areas. “Many conservation organizations struggle from one short-term project funding to the next. We give them security for 15 or even 50 years. That’s incredible.”
This was also confirmed by Yanuar Cahyo, Biodiversity Coordinator at Fauna & Flora International for the Tambrauw Mountains legacy landscape in Indonesia. “LLF has a big impact on our work,” he said. “LLF’s financing model enables us to establish participatory structures for cooperation with Indigenous populations and to build trust. That takes time.”
Yanuar Cahyo is one of 39 experts from LLF-funded landscapes who were invited to attend the week-long learning and sharing event in Berlin. During the second half of the week, participants travelled to a venue outside of Berlin to take part in three days of workshops about nature conservation, where the focus was on peer-to-peer learning and collaboration.
At the exhibition opening, LLF Executive Director Stefanie Lang emphasized the importance of sharing experiences. LLF, she said, aims to build a community of conservation experts to continuously improve conservation practice on the ground. “We can see that conservation activities nowadays are getting more complex – political influence, land-use planning, species monitoring, law enforcement, livelihood activities, and much more. To negotiate all those different interests, NGOs need time and money to develop forums for negotiation and trust. LLF allows for this with our long–term support.”
