São Tomé and Príncipe (STP): the STP EcoTela Fund

🌿💼🌍 The Rio Impact team led a week-long mission to deliver a training and facilitate the national dialogue on the Conservation Trust Fund (CTF) in São Tomé and Príncipe (STP): the STP EcoTela Fund.

A fund concept was presented and discussed with key partners in STP, including within the interministerial committee for biodiversity financing. This process is notably supported by the GEF, under the leadership of the STP government, in partnership with UNDP and BirdLife International.

Among the key issues addressed:

💡 An open CTF governance ensures good financial management and strengthens the trust of technical and financial partners in the fund.

🏛️ The legal form of a foundation recognized of public interest is preferable, which would establish the STP EcoTela Fund as an independent national entity, with robust state representation in its governance alongside other civil society and private sector actors.

🤝 The fund’s utilization should unleash all energies ready to engage in biodiversity conservation and ecosystem restoration, including public entities, NGOs, civil society, and the private sector: dedicated expenditure windows are therefore being designed.

🌍🌱 Expanding the fund’s scope beyond biodiversity to include climate and environmental challenges makes sense to avoid a proliferation of funds in STP and to seize additional climate and environmental finance opportunities.

💼💼 In a context where STP lacks a national accredited entity to the GCF, it may be relevant to consider the possibility for the EcoTela Fund to adopt all good practice standards qualifying it for direct GCF access (and possibly other sources such as the Adaptation Fund).

🌍🤝 The design of the EcoTela Fund incorporates best practices from other funds within the Consortium of African Funds for the Environment, such as the FAPBM Fund (Madagascar), BIOFUND (Mozambique), and the Parks and Reserves Foundation of Côte d’Ivoire (among others), as well as from the RedLAC network.

We need more operational autonomous funds at the national and local levels to succeed in biodiversity financing; this is essential to achieve Target 19 of the Global Biodiversity Framework #GBF. With such funds, financing reaches directly local project holders and communities. Funding where it matters! 💰🌱
The STP EcoTela Fund is expected to be fully operational by 2025. All partners interested in supporting the EcoTela Fund are invited to contact us. 🌿🤝 Join us in financing biodiversity and climate action in São Tomé and Príncipe!

#STP EcoTela Fund #FinanceforNature
Agostinho Fernandes Marquinha Martins Bárbara Campos Jean-Baptiste DEFFONTAINES Juerg Klarer Vania Trovoada Bruna Bauer Idalecio Viana Adelino Amado Pereira Pilar Valbuena Perez Damiano Borgogno Sophia Mauline @Maria Teresa Mendizabal Ludwig Liagre, PhD