**4.4 Core funding secured**

Improved operational planning enables the protected area managers clearly define their capacity gaps and most critical resource requirements for effective implementation of the activities. PONT's long-term co-financing enables the protected area managers in the Prespa-Ohrid Ecoregion to recruit new staff and deploy resources to sustain their core management functions. Using the budget template developed by PONT, protected area managers develop a detailed budget for each action that is broken down into five cost categories: staff costs; consultants; equipment and infrastructure; travel, meeting, and training costs; and consumables, operating and other costs. PONT co-financing amounts up to 50% of the total annual budget and is used for covering both recurrent and non-recurrent cost related to the core management operations, except for procurement of equipment and construction of new infrastructure exceeding € 20,000.

The PONT budget template helps protected area managers combine effectively PONT's co-financing with funding from the government or the revenue they generate, as well as projects implemented by conservation NGOs or international donors and agencies.

Lack of detailed data on protected area management costs hamper effective conservation planning and management. Protected areas in the Prespa-Ohrid Ecoregion lack systems in place that connect financial data with the on-ground conservation actions. Financial information is commonly managed for the purposes of meeting national financial reporting requirements, that are general in nature, rather than management. The annual budget using PONT's template is organized in a way that permits costs aggregation and analysis by results that are in turn linked to management objectives. This also informs the operational planning in the subsequent management cycle and helps identify opportunities for improved productivity and effectiveness. Further progress in operational planning would depend on the capacity to improve the estimates of the required costs of different functional areas of work and also of the levels of management performance.

### **4.5 The way forward: Prespa-Ohrid Ecoregion**

Having a secured total budget allocation for the year in the long-term enables the protected area managers in the Prespa-Ohrid Ecoregion to develop and maintain the key functional areas and programmes, based on the management plan and thereby increase the management effectiveness. Especially recurrent activities such as regular monitoring of biodiversity, visitor management and environmental education have recently improved. These themes previously relied on short-term and often discontinued support from donors providing initial investments and technical assistance, but no funding to sustain the operations in the long-run. With PONT's long-term co-financing the protected area managers are able to recruit and retain new staff and gradually retrain the existing ones to develop and implement the key programmes. Capacities to mobilize, manage and implement additional funding from external sources for nonrecurrent activities that have a more flexible timeline of implementation has increased. Several rangers, biologists, communication and education experts have joined the

protected area management staff in the Prespa-Ohrid Ecoregion over the past two years filling in long-vacant positions of critical importance for their basic operations.

One of the roles of PONT is to facilitate and support the establishment of partnerships between the protected area management authorities and the environmental actors working on issues where the protected areas have insufficient capacity such as habitat/wetland mapping, wetland restoration, biodiversity monitoring, environmental education, tourism development, etc. Due to the improved planning by protected area management authorities it is more clear for the managers what can be done by themselves and where there is need for resources from third parties such as NGOs, scientific institutions or local people. Several formal and informal arrangement have been established over time such as the employment of temporary local workers helping Prespa National Park in Albania with the maintenance of hiking trails, removal of alien species and fire management. Already four formal partnership agreements/MoUs have evolved over time between protected area management authorities and environmental actors. Often the partnerships started informally by working together and after a certain period of cooperation these partnerships were acknowledged through MoUs. For example the Public Institution Galicica National Park established partnerships for nature-based tourism with the local Alpine club PATAGONIA Ohrid and Association of Sports "Sport for all – All for sport". Resen Municipality established partnerships with the Public Scientific Institution Hydrobiological Institute Ohrid and the Macedonian Ecological Society. Three other MoUs are currently being considered based on the good experiences of cooperation i.e., one by the Public Institution Galicica National Park with the Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts (MASA) in North Macedonia; one by the Regional Administration of Protected Area Korçe in Albania with the NGO PPNEA, and one between PPNEA and the University of Korçe (signed on 22 May 2021).

Highlighted should also be the more complex cooperation on a transboundary level taking place in Prespa and recently formalized and implemented by the three governments (29–30 June 2021). The transboundary 'Prespa Park' was created in 2000 with a declaration by the Prime Ministers of Albania, Greece and North Macedonia stating the importance of the Prespa basin and recognizing the preliminary work done by environmental NGOs. To institutionalize the operations of the 'Prespa Park' an agreement was signed by the three Environmental Ministers and the EU in 2010. This agreement stipulates the need to make a management plan and the development of Integrated River Basin Management Plans in line with EU and international standards. The agreement was signed by all parties in 2010, followed by a ratification process which was only finalized in 2019. Recently, the Prespa Park Management Committee has been established with representatives of administrations, protected areas, NGOs, and local municipalities to coordinate the work on environmental protection and sustainable development of Prespa. The process of coming from this 'de jure' transboundary cooperation on paper to a 'de facto' implementation has evolved over a period of 21 years.

In 2018 PONT won the first Pathfinder Award [33, 34]. Encouraged and supported by PONT, several of the stakeholders involved in these processes are currently developing their first PANORAMA solutions to identify the challenges and benefits of their successful management strategies, with a focus on building and maintaining partnerships among local protected area stakeholders [35].

#### **5. Concluding remarks**

The two case studies illustrate different but converging paths in the evolvement of local partnerships aiming at more effective protected area management. The core

#### *The Importance of Partnerships for Effective Protected Area Management DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.99595*

to the success is to build sufficient capacity within the protected area management authorities for them to understand the priorities and the resources needed to fund, manage and implement these priorities. Specialized skills and capacities in most countries in several subjects important for effective protected area management are limited and it would be impossible and too expensive to try to build this capacity inhouse. Having a clear vision on what needs to be done and building a strong cooperation between partners through effective communication is the key to success to come to more effective protected area management (either on a national, regional or transboundary level).

The Protected Area Management Effectiveness (PAME) framework, developed by the IUCN World Commission for Protected Areas [36] provides a means to assess contributions of the solutioning approach for addressing challenges in protected area management [21]. The METT, which is built around the PAME framework, was applied in a participatory manner in both case studies, opening ways for building partnerships among major protected area stakeholders. A closer look at the METT scores for protected areas in the Prespa-Ohrid Ecoregion, reveals that the most significant progress since 2018 was made with respect to 'Inputs' and 'Processes'. The latter was mostly related to improved implementation of management-oriented surveys and research, as well as advancement of environmental education. The partnership agreements between protected area authorities and locally present NGOs, underpinned by the long-term PONT cofinancing, directly contributed to these advancements. Similarly, the 2016 METT assessment for Hin Nam No showed that the management effectiveness score had increased by 13 per cent since 2014, accompanied by a 15 per cent increase in good governance score, as measured by the IUCN Indicators for Governance Quality [2].

The involvement of stakeholders in the METT assessments was instrumental to improving both management and governance aspects of conserving biodiversity in protected areas in both case studies. Many of the issues and challenges discussed and agreed during the METT assessments have both management and governance aspects and the solutions and approaches agreed upon are subsequently integrated into the strategic and operational planning. In both case studies a range of institutional mechanisms and processes (e.g. Management Boards, advisory councils, Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) procedures, MoUs, METT assessments, participatory monitoring and law enforcement, etc.) provide a diverse and complementary ways of sharing authority and responsibility among protected area stakeholders.

The case studies demonstrate that METT can be useful in evaluating the success of adapting and uptake of the building blocks of PANORAMA solutions to protected areas in different contexts and geographies. On the other hand, by offering a systematic and comprehensive approach to developing and sharing lessons learned regarding the challenges and successes in protected area management, the PANORAMA methodology encourages learning and experimentation among protected area stakeholders.

### **Acknowledgements**

The authors would like to thank all relevant stakeholders involved in the work around Hin Nam No in Laos and the Prespa-Ohrid Ecoregion in the Western Balkans. We also would like to thank Marie Fischborn of the IUCN for her comments and edits. Without these inputs this publication would not have been possible.

*Protected Area Management - Recent Advances*
