Support the Caribbean Challenge

An appeal from The Nature Conservancy:

In May of 2008, The Bahamas’ government, alongside leaders from Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines launched the Caribbean Challenge, a region-wide campaign to protect the health of the Caribbean’s lands and waters. Today, eight Caribbean nations have committed to protecting nearly 20 percent of their marine and coastal habitat by 2020.

The Caribbean Challenge will result in a wholesale transformation of countries’ national park systems and will nearly triple the amount of marine and coastal habitat currently under protection, setting aside almost 21 million acres of coral reefs, mangroves, sea grass beds and other important habitat for sea turtles, whales, sharks and other wildlife. The three core components of the Challenge include:

•creating networks of marine protected areas expanding across 21 million acres of territorial coasts and waters

•establishing protected area trust funds to generate permanent, dedicated and sustainable funding sources for the effective management, expansion and scientific monitoring of all parks and protected areas

•developing national level demonstrations projects for climate change adaptation
Modeled on other large-scale conservation financing efforts, including the Micronesia Challenge and the Great Bear Rainforest in British Columbia, the Caribbean Challenge goes far beyond piecemeal, incremental conservation. The campaign to meet the Caribbean Challenge is a campaign to end paper parks in the Caribbean forever.

To support the Challenge, the Conservancy has pledged $20 million in cash and in-kind resources to endow national protected area trusts and provide technical support. . . .

Happily, the Challenge offers an opportunity to profoundly change that projected future of loss into a realized future of abundance. Please join us as we work to fulfill our $20 million pledge to help protect 21 million acres of the Caribbean and all of the plants, animals and people who depend upon those clear waters for survival.

With your help, the Caribbean Challenge can make an immediate and material difference to the future of the plants, animals and people of the Caribbean. Please join us. Your contribution matters.