In the fall of 2025, Conservation Strategy Fund, along with BIOFIN, IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas, Sustainable Finance Coalition, and the Conservation Finance Alliance (CFA),  partnered with the High Ambition Coalition for Nature & People (HAC), to contribute to a series of ‘bootcamp’ sessions on conservation finance. 

The High Ambition Coalition is uniquely effective at uniting efforts and resources from its member states towards target 3 of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) - securing 30% of the world’s land and 30% of the world’s sea as ecologically protected areas by 2030. This goal, known as the 30x30 goal, is considered by experts as the most credible interim goal in the interest of preventing biodiversity loss and climate change (with 50% protection being the agreed-upon permanent benchmark to aspire towards). Since its founding in 2019, HAC and its membership has grown in scope and number, reaching an organizational headcount of 120 nations. 

Targets 18 and 19 of the GBF, which focus on shifting incentives towards conservation and mobilising $200 Billion per year for nature, have highlighted the importance of finance capacity development to help meet 30x30 goals. With the support of CSF, HAC produced two ‘tracks’ for bootcamp participants, with one available to all professionals. CSF’s experience developing professional development courses in the conservation finance field was utilized over the course of this partnership, funneling insights from experts and mobilizing pre-existing educational assets towards the HAC bootcamps.

CFA Executive Director David Meyers and former CSF Lead Economist Marcello Hernández-Blanco presented during the live sessions. Both representatives also led discussion groups in French and Spanish, respectively. 

David Meyers presented on the recently published Practice Guidance for Protected and Conserved Area Finance, which CFA developed and published in collaboration with IUCH WCPA and the Sustainable Finance Specialist Group. The guide has eight main chapters, each of which details strategies for implementing sustainable finance tools to enhance the financial sustainability of protected areas. In addition to eight chapters of conservation finance, the practice guide contains fact sheets with specific and more technical information on complex conservation finance strategies.

Marcello Hernández-Blanco, after a brief introduction of CSF’s global operations, presented a case study of a Payment for Ecosystem Services scheme in Costa Rica, focusing on the successes the team was able to achieve while implementing the strategy.

CSF was proud to lend its expertise and educational resources to the multi-organizational partnership and could not be happier with the turnout to each of the sessions we participated in. The recordings to these sessions may be found on HAC’s website.