And when we asked Minister of Sustainable Development Orland Habet about it at another event today he said there is no overlap - as APAMO claims - between the PACT act and the National Protected Areas Systems Act. He held to the position that - even as they are sponsoring concerts and stuff - PACT needs to look at the investment end of the relationship with co-managers:
Orlando Habet, Minister of Sustainable Development
"There is no real overlap as the NBO has its own piece of regulation PACT has its own act. What is happening is that there is sort of a relooking at the PACT act, where traditionally what happened was that the PACT would provide monies to co-managers on a grant basis but the PACT act calls for sustainability and so you can't forever be giving out money without any type of accountability. So what we are trying to do now is to have a conservation investment component of PACT so that you can also afford the NGO's the co- managers to be able to get grants, a portion, be able to account back to PACT on how that was used and so the investment portion is looking at how you can maybe leverage whatever we give you to get back some more money from other agencies whether local or international to build on your project to build on your co management to improve on the protected areas which you are co-managing."
We'll keep following the story.
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