The Latin American and Caribbean Network of Environmental Funds (RedLAC) met from 27 October to 1 November 2018 in Santa Cruz de La Sierra city in Bolivia, at its 20th Annual Assembly with the theme of Creativity and Innovation for Sustainable Development.

This is event is held annually rotated among country members and for current year it was held in Bolivia with the support of FUNDESNAP, FCBC and Fundación Natura.

More than 130 members were present among members of RedLAC, CAFÉ – African Consortium of Environmental Funds, members of the government, multilateral agencies, civil society, private sector, representatives of protected areas, academia, media and keynote speakers to present and discuss about innovation for financing biodiversity conservation.

RedLAC considers continuous learning and innovation as a value of the network, which over these years has not only been limited to its financial profile, but also went beyond the environmental, social and economic dimensions, aiming to contribute to local, national sustainable development, regional and global, integrating all relevant sectors of society.

Hereupon, RedLAC highlighted the main contributions and innovations of a joint work of over 20 years of its existence, picking the lessons learned as a basis to face the challenges to reach Agenda 2030.

During the event, several parallel sessions were held, including the session on innovative sustainable financing mechanisms facilitated by the Conservation Finance Alliance (CFA), monitoring and evaluation sessions, biodiversity offsets, K project results, donor round table discussions, success stories in the region and the General Assembly.

A field trip complemented the concept of Innovation in conjunction with the tourism experience in a regional protection area and natural heritage of Bolivia – the Lomas de Arena Regional Park and the Simon Applied Ecology Center Simón I. Patiño that seeks to validate and transfer methodologies to implement sustainable agriculture in fragile tropical soils, seeking to reduce environmental pollution caused by intensive agriculture.

The participation of BIOFUND in this event represented an opportunity for learning and exchange of experience on the most varied areas of intervention of environmental funds. BIOFUND’s biodiversity offsets program was highlighted and presented in two technical sessions, namely the Conservation Finance Alliance Workshop and Project K – Knowledge for Action from RedLAC and CAFÉ Network collaboration.

For more information, visit www.redlac.org