PACIFIC conservation leaders called for long-term funding to flow through trusted local institutions and be shaped around communities, saying short-term projects and complex financing requirements risk leaving the people responsible for protecting land and ocean without the support to act.
“The Pacific does not need another pilot,” Filimone Waqabaca, chief executive of the Fiji Development Bank, said during the PreCop31 side event in Nadi, describing a conservation-finance partnership that he said began with consultation before lending was considered.
He said Conservation International consulted 72 villages and chiefs in Fiji’s Lau Province across 13 districts as partners to build a locally owned financing system.
The model puts communities and customary leaders in charge, with Conservation International providing community engagement, conservation science, and enterprise support, and the bank handling local origination, credit assessment, and finance, Waqabaca said.
He said about 90 per cent of small businesses in Lau were informal, so preparing loan proposals included financial literacy in local languages and business registration.
“We design finance around community systems rather than asking communities to fit around our finance,” he said.
Waqabaca said the Fiji Development Bank had established a maritime ocean stewardship facility for maritime communities across Fiji and a blended-finance platform that other Pacific development banks could replicate.
The funding model must pay for readiness before lending and support institutions that can prepare and finance projects over time, he said.
“What they need is some patient catalytic capital delivered through institutions that they already trust,” he said, arguing that community enterprises, climate resilience and conservation take time to mature.
Pacific strategy consultant Taholo Kami said ocean conservation finance should align different funding sources so support remains consistent.
He described a conservation-credit programme in Niue, rendered “New Way”, in which a proposed 40 per cent fully protected area was costed against impacts on fisheries and other stakeholders, with stakeholders deciding activities.
Kami said the programme had passed halfway to its funding target.
Acting British High Commissioner to Fiji Steph Lysaght urged funders to replace jargon with practical questions about where money goes and whether it reaches people addressing problems on the ground.
“We need to listen.”