SANParks Financial Sustainability Strategy
SANParks is at a pivotal moment in its institutional and financial trajectory. As the custodian of over four million hectares of globally significant biodiversity assets, SANParks plays a critical role in advancing South Africa’s conservation, climate, and development goals. Yet, the organisation faces a complex and intensifying set of pressures: a growing infrastructure and maintenance backlog, declining real budget allocations, increasing operational costs, rigid fiscal rules, and limited flexibility to reinvest surplus income. These pressures threaten the organisation’s ability to deliver on its mandate at scale and with impact.
The challenge
Protected areas play a vital role in conserving biodiversity, supporting ecological integrity, and delivering ecosystem services critical to societal well-being. However, globally and within South Africa, these areas face persistent and escalating financial constraints. For SANParks, the challenge is magnified by the need to maintain a vast protected area estate while expanding into new terrains aligned with emerging global conservation targets and local socio-economic imperatives.
Notwithstanding these uncertainties, it is essential to develop robust financial strategies that include diversified funding sources, strong partnerships, and adaptive management practices in these broader landscapes. By fostering collaboration among governments, NGOs, the private sector, and local communities, the Mega Living Landscape initiative can enhance its financial resilience and achieve its long-term goals. This approach can assist SANParks to develop a better understanding of the financial implications pertinent to the financial sustainability and durable financing of these critical landscapes into the future.
The approach
To become more adaptive, resilient, and capable of leveraging external capital, SANParks financial architecture requires re-engineering. The Financial Sustainability Strategy (FSS) has been developed to meet this need, as it provides a multi-year roadmap to enhance SANParks’ financial sustainability by:
- Stabilising the cost-to-income ratio, reducing unnecessary expenditure, and improving operational efficiency;
- Unlocking new revenue streams linked to tourism, ecosystem services, and commercial partnerships;
- Addressing long-term investment gaps in infrastructure, digital systems, and institutional capabilities;
- Creating the enabling conditions, including regulatory reform, to improve financial agility and external investment readiness
The strategy is structured around five interdependent pillars, each representing a domain of reform and investment:
- Enhancing Revenue Generation
- Improving Operational Efficiency
- Investing for Impact
- Mobilising / Diversifying Funding
- Accessing Alternative Funding
The strategy outlines priority interventions, timeframes, and enabling conditions, structured into immediate cost-containment actions, medium-term investment shifts, and long-term sustainability measures.
Implementation will require adaptive governance, rigorous performance tracking, and the strategic use of donor, private, and public financing mechanisms.
Impact
Rebel enabled a Financial Sustainability Strategy for South African National Parks.
