The objective of the study is to provide an overview of global donor resources that have been approved and distributed across the Amazon to strengthen and promote conservation of its natural resources by collecting and quantifying non-reimbursable funding towards conservation from 2020 to 2022.

More specifically, this study aims to answer the following questions:

• How much was distributed for conservation in the region through non-reimbursable grants from 2020 to 2022?
• How does this amount compare to what was invested in conservation in the region in previous years?
• Who are the largest international funders of conservation in the Amazon?
• What is the primary conservation and sustainable management strategy of their investments?
• Which countries and types of organizations are the largest recipients of these funds?
• Does the strategic focus of the investments vary by funder type?

The study does not determine or evaluate the impact this funding has had on conservation, nor does it quantify the gap between what is needed and what is pledged.

Study Criteria

Time frame: The analysis focuses on projects that were approved from January 1, 2020 to December 31, 2022. In order to preserve a clear cut off date to facilitate future surveys, no projects approved from 2023 onwards were included, even though some donors provided information about grants that were approved in 2023. There is data shown in the online dashboard for the year 2023 forward, but this represents estimated (see explanation below) future disbursements for funding that was committed in 2022 or before.

Commitments vs. Disbursements: Funds included in the study represent donor commitments. In a few cases, however, funding represents disbursement data instead of committed funds, since this was how several participants reported their data. Under the Methodology by Distributions, funding commitments that occurred between the time frame were divided evenly across the number of award years indicated by the donor. This allowed then to estimate investment across the years but does not represent actual annual disbursements as data was not uniformly available.¹⁶ Annex 1 includes an additional analysis where results are reported according to the year that the total grant was awarded/approved/committed by the donor.

Currency: Cumulative project funds from different international donors are converted to US dollars, based on the award year.

Donor types: Donors are grouped into one of the following categories:

1. Bilateral institutions
2. Multilateral institutions
3. Private foundations
4. International NGOs

Grantees: Recipients are put into one of the following categories:

1. National governments
2. Subnational or local governments
3. International NGOs
4. National or local NGOs
5. Academic institutions
6. Researchers or research groups
7. Private sector or entrepreneurs
8. Indigenous entities¹⁷
9. Not specified
10. Other

Geographic focus: The study includes projects implemented in the Amazon, including in the following countries or territories:

1. Bolivia
2. Brazil
3. Colombia
4. Ecuador
5. French Guiana¹⁸
6. Guyana
7. Peru
8. Suriname
9. Venezuela
10. Region - Used as a category when donors have a regional intervention or when a project is implemented in multiple countries, and the donor is unable to specify a breakdown of funding across countries.

Conservation and sustainable management strategies: This survey preserves the same categories of strategies used in 2017 with the GBMF study and the subsequent World Bank 2021 study (see Table 2). These strategies differ from those originally mapped in the 2014 survey.

Data Gathering

The study utilized multiple approaches to collect data from a diverse range of funders with an environmental or climate focus. First, a virtual meeting was organized with donors to present the study’s objectives, methodology, and timeline as well as answer any questions to promote engagement and participation. Then, questionnaires on the funding data were sent to funders, and those who participated in the previous analysis were provided with their data from the prior study to ease completion and ensure consistency. The study’s author conducted follow-up calls with donor representatives for quality control to verify data and avoid any possible duplication with the previous study. These follow-up conversations and correspondence with the donors were an important element of the study as they enhanced the quality of the data provided. In a few cases, revisions or additions were made to previously included data as per donors’ request. Some donors who had not participated in previous studies included data prior to 2020. This was incorporated in the current study, resulting in amounts that differ slightly from the ones originally delivered for the 2016-2019 period. The study’s author also used online sites to verify and supplement data provided by donors. Overall, 98 percent of the donors contacted responded to the survey questionnaire to provide the data.

Important Considerations about the Data

This study maintains the same rationale of tracing funding back to its original source, which helps avoid double counting and provides a more accurate picture of total funding levels flowing to the region. Adding a second methodology (results in Annex 1) to provide two different streams of results added thoroughness in the analysis. Despite this, complexities were still present, and the analysis encountered three trade-offs worth highlighting:

1. Loss of precision in conservation strategies: The conservation strategies in this analysis reflect donor intentions, but their grant funding may have been implemented on the ground using a variety of different strategies. In other cases, a donor may award a large sum of money to a thematic fund, which then awards to organizations on the ground with more specific actions. This was especially true for some bilateral and multilateral donors that award larger sums, which then get sub-granted to other organizations via many smaller projects with different strategies than what the original source indicated for the study. For example, donors contributing to the Amazon Bioeconomy Fund classified their work under Other rather than rural livelihoods or capacity building and training.
2. Loss of precision in target country: Similarly, the allocation by country in this analysis reflects donor intentions. However, country allocation might change if for example awarding resources to a fund or to a re-granting organization which then sub-grants to several countries and the final destination is not possible to know upfront.
3. Primary grantees: The grantee categories in this study reflect the primary grant recipient and not subsequent re-granting or contracting that the primary recipient may do. Some of the donors included in this study, primarily the International NGOs, were both grantees and re-grantors.

The study addresses these trade-offs, when possible, by utilizing the detailed information on projects provided by re-granting organizations for the original donors’ allocations. This survey does not include information from host countries’ funding contributions to conservation in the Amazon, due to the risk of being double counted. Data collection from the private sector was not conducted for this survey as a separate category.¹⁹ Funding amounts from participating NGOs include funds raised from entities which did not participate in this study, including individual donors, the private sector, and other organizations for conservation efforts. While involving certain trade-offs, tracing data back to the original source avoids double counting and ultimately ensures a more accurate picture of overall funding trends over time.

Another important consideration about the data is that while maintaining the same methodology (called “Methodology by Distributions” in this study) used in the previous studies ensures consistency and a more in-depth overview over time, that methodology misses an important piece of information, which is the total value of all grants approved in a given year. The methodology divides funding commitments evenly across the number of award years to estimate investment across the years, meaning the total award value of each grant is not applied to the year the grant was approved. While this helps to give a picture of the continuous flows of financing over the years – with the caveat that it does not represent actual disbursement data – it does not accurately portray how much money in new grants was pledged and awarded each year. It also does not consider that each donor has different replenishment cycles and lag times between grant approval and grant start date. To remedy this, and based on feedback received from participating donors, this study includes a second methodology as an annex (called “Methodology by Awards”), which attributes the total value of each grant award to the year the award was approved and does not divide funding awards across the duration of the project. This provides an accurate depiction of total resources approved annually to support conservation in the Amazon, which is different from the years the funding was implemented on the ground.