Myth 13: Marine Conservation Agreements require endowments to be successful.

Fact 13: Marine Conservation Agreements, like most other conservation strategies, are likely to be more successful if long-term management actions and costs are accounted for—endowments are one mechanism for this to be accomplished.

Marine Conservation Agreements (MCAs) are similar to most other conservation strategies in that they often, but not always, involve long-term financial commitments. While MCAs do not require endowments to meet these long-term financial needs, endowments are a useful tool. Endowments that are dedicated to MCA projects ensure a sustained flow of benefits to land and resource owners, managers and users, thus helping to ensure achievement of the MCA project Goals over time.

Some conservation organizations feel endowments lock up scarce funds that could be used to meet pressing needs elsewhere. Although this may be true, the fact remains that long-term recurrent costs are an unavoidable reality that, if not covered, can quickly lead to costly setbacks in any conservation effort, including MCA projects. Moreover, many years of effort and experience have revealed the challenges of funding recurrent project costs:

• Projects involving sustainable resource use have generally not shown convincing financial or ecological benefits.
• Many sites cannot satisfy the prerequisites for financially successful ecotourism.
• Programs based on non-timber forest products have not achieved conservation on a meaningful scale.
• Integrated conservation and development approaches have widely been recognized as a disappointment.

For long-term financial sustainability, no tool other than dedicated endowments has demonstrated an ability to guarantee a sustained flow of benefits over time.1