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SUSTAINABLE FINANCING OF MPAs IN THE MEDITERRANEAN: A FINANCIAL ANALYSIS

9 APPENDIX 2: LOCAL DATA COLLECTION

The local budget analysis is based on data generated via assessment of the financial status
of 20 MPAs across the Mediterranean basin. This information represents the baseline for
identifying needs for basic and optimal management.
Detailed information on individual MPA budgets is often confidential and can rarely be
collected from public reports or websites. To generate this financial data, a questionnaire
was thus sent to managers of 32 individual MPAs between October 2014 and January 2015.

To ensure a common understanding of the questionnaire, interviews with MPA managers
were conducted. During the MedPAN regional experience-sharing workshop held in Tirana,
Albania (in November 2014), face-to-face interviews were conducted with 15 of these MPA
managers (directors, administrative staff, financial assistants, project officers, etc.).
Additional interviews were conducted by phone with the remaining managers. Most MPA
managers participating in the survey presented identification of financial needs as an
essential step to ensuring sustainable management of their MPA and showed interest in
assessment of their financial needs. MPA managers presented financial data for 2012, 2013
and 2014
This financial data was collected as follows:
Available finances. Details on MPA finances were provided by the respondents in a range
of currencies. An overview of individual MPA funding by governments, donors or other
sources is not available for the Mediterranean. Information that may exist on an agency or
donor basis is dispersed, unclear and not systematically collected (Lopez et al., 2006).
Contributors of funding for MPA management and creation were inventoried and divided into
categories according to location (multilateral, bilateral, national, and sub-national) and type
(government, NGO, private individual and volunteer and in-kind donations). The timeframe of
the income focused on the period 2010-2014 in order to elict trends and forecast funding for
the future. Finally, for partially terrestrial MPAs, respondents were also asked to estimate the
share of the total budget actually dedicated to the marine part of the Protected Areas.
Management costs. Costs were split into three categories:
1. MPA current expenses;
2. MPA detailed spending patterns per management component;
3. Additional operating and investment resources (staff capacities and training facilities)
considered necessary for attainment of minimum effective management.
Details on MPA characteristics (protection type, goals, pressures, etc.) and global budget
were reviewed from various web sources and grey literature:
▪ the World Database on Protected Areas and the MAPAMED database provide
detailed information on the geographical characteristics of MPAs in the
Mediterranean;
▪ the Status of Marine Protected Areas in the Mediterranean Sea 2012 and the
MAPAMED database contain information on the budget of the Mediterranean MPA
system and also an amount of information on MPA management effort level.

May 2015 – Vertigo Lab, for MedPAN, RAC/SPA and WWF Med. Page 96