Funding of protected areas: a purely public task?

Protected areas (PAs) are nowadays established and managed increasingly by local non-profit organizations, local or regional stakeholders and private households. The public sector, however, is still seen as the main responsible for the maintenance and funding of PAs according to literature. The reason therefore is that at first glance the goods and services produced by PAs are defined as (impure) public goods. At a second glance, PAs provide a lot of different services, which have very diverse characteristics, and thus can not only be defined as public goods but can be classified also as club goods, private goods or common pool resources (commons). Consequently, the question arises whether there is a mismatch of public and private funding. The aim of this chapter is thus, first, to analyse theoretically the funding sources (public funding, donations, private sponsoring) for PAs and to have a look on the international development of PA funding. Second, an empirical analysis aims at investigating the sources of PA funding and their correlation to a ‘publicness’ indicator of PAs. This indicator has been developed on the basis of the ecosystem goods and services provided by the respective PAs. The results show, on the one hand, that PA funding is a public task according to the public goods theory. On the other hand, the empirical analysis shows some mismatch of public and private funding. An increased expenditure of civil society and private companies could contribute, hence, to a generally more sustainable funding for PAs.