| Overview : Uganda’s Protected areas (PA) cover approximately 16.3% of the country’s total land area[1] (NEMA, 2009). They are largely divided into three major categories that include: i) National Parks, Wildlife Reserves and Community Wildlife Sanctuaries; ii) Permanent Forest Estate (Forest Reserves); and iii) Ramsar sites[2]. Wildlife Protected Areas cover 11% of Uganda’s total area and hold about 50% of the country’s wildlife. They include: 10 National Parks and 12 Wildlife Reserves, 4 Ramsar sites, 7 Wildlife Sanctuaries, 13 Community Wildlife Areas, 3 Man and Biosphere (MAB) reserves and one site on the provisional world heritage list. The Republic of Uganda has, over the years, taken concrete steps to ensure that the conservation and sustainable management of her Protected Areas. Steps taken by the Government include the adoption of the National Environment Management Policy (1994); enactment of the i) Wildlife Act (2000), ii) National Forestry and Tree Planting Act (2003) and iii) National Environment Act (2005); development of several sectoral policies such as Community Conservation Policy 2004, Wildlife Policy 2014 and the Tourism Policy 2015. Despite the existence of these laws and policies as well as supportive international agreements, unsustainable human activities still pose a big challenge to the continued survival of Uganda’s rich biodiversity. Uganda’s natural resources are declining at an alarming rate. From 1994 to 2008, forest areas declined from 25 per cent to 15 per cent and wetland cover from 15.6 to 10.9 per cent[3] largely due to unsustainable production and consumption systems, limited alternative livelihoods opportunities and human wildlife conflict. There is also a significant unmet demand for funding of conservation which underscores the need for market solutions and private sector investment in achieving resource allocation and conservation goals. To preserve the health of natural ecosystems, significantly higher volumes of capital investment are required than the amounts currently allocated for conservation. Private sector investment therefore is needed, not to replace but to complement traditional sources of conservation capital such as public funding and philanthropy, which have been negatively impacted by the global economic downturn. Conservation finance provides an opportunity to addressing the problem of gross underinvestment in this area. Following a meeting between the President of Uganda H.E Yoweri Kaguta Museveni and Ms. Helen Clark, UNDP Administrator, at the ‘Giants Summit’ (hosted by the Republic of Kenya and the NGO Space for Giants in April 2016), where UNDP reiterated its will to support the Government of Uganda on environmental matters, it was thereafter agreed that in subsequent meetings between Government, Space for Giants and UNDP there was need for Uganda to develop an investment framework to harness emerging finance for conservation, especially into protected areas management. Further, that Uganda would thereafter host the Giants Club Conservation and Tourism Investment Forum to showcase the highlighted investment opportunities in Uganda’s Conservation sector. The Government of Uganda has requested UNDP to provide technical assistance to undertake an assessment of Uganda’s Protected Areas and their conservation potential. The purpose of this assessment is to establish and report on the conservation status of protected areas as part of a wider piece of work to determine suitability for investment. This builds on a parallel request by Government to the NGO Space for Giants to assess the investment platform and opportunity. In this regard, UNDP is seeking the services of a competent consultant to undertake a rapid assessment of the conservation status of Uganda’s ‘tier 2’ Protected Areas, namely its Wildlife Reserves, Sanctuaries and Community Wildlife Areas. [1] National Environment Management Authority (NEMA), 2009 [2] Protected areas designated and managed under international law of Conventions [3] National State of the Environment Report, 2012 | 
