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Strategic Plan 2004-2010

9. Resources

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Another key cross cutting objectives is to increase funding to match requirements, and to maintain a healthy funding stream.

9.1 The financial position at the end of 2004

SCAR’s ability to carry out international coordination effectively, and to be an independent source of advice for Antarctic scientific research, depends in large degree on its overall financial capacity. SCAR’s core funding comes from Membership contributions (Annex 2). At present these are assessed on the basis of 5 categories with the following scale for contributions in 2005:

Table 1. SCAR Contributions 2005

The annual income raised by Members’ contributions was $322,000 in 2003. SCAR’s income has stayed at that level since 1995, when income rose by about 25% due to introduction of a new contribution category, and an increase in the number of Members.

From the start of 1995 SCAR has planned to spend 50% of its income on science coordination and 50% on administration of its activities. Most of the administration costs have been in salaries to maintain the Secretariat. The amount budgeted for science averaged $167,000 per year from 1995 to 2003.

During SCAR’s history, underspends of various kinds from time to time contributed to the development of a cash reserve that reached $382,000 at the end of 2003.

9.2 The financial strategy

The financial strategy for the future entails the following key elements:

  1. To raise the level of contributions;
  2. To maintain as far as possible an even balance between expenditure on science and administration;
  3. To maintain a cash reserve of around $100,000, so as to ensure that salaries can be paid at the beginning of each year;
  4. To obtain targeted funds from appropriate external funding sources to support selected activities within the SCAR programme, and, if possible, to double by that means the budget obtained from contributions;
  5. To levy a small overhead charge on all external funds handled by SCAR, to reflect the cost of administering grants and to provide an additional source of financial flexibility;
  6. To encourage Members to provide additional voluntary contributions to provide extra flexibility and support for science;
  7. To attract new Members (e.g. from among the parties to the Antarctic Treaty);
  8. To save where possible on administrative costs.

The rise in contributions is called for to meet new requirements for SCAR funds that have originated in part from the SCAR’s reorganisation and that are causing the cash reserve to be depleted. First of these requirements is the restructuring of the SCAR Secretariat described in section 8.2 (above) and intended to create a more proactive Secretariat to ensure continuity in SCAR operations in the two-year hiatus between SCAR Delegates’ meetings. The increase in staff costs of hiring an Executive Director will be offset by a reduction in staff costs of around $30,000 per year when the present Executive Secretary retires in June 2005 and is replaced by the new Executive Officer. The overall annual increase in staff costs from the beginning of 2006 onwards will be $55,000. This cost is being met initially by drawing on the cash reserve. Table 2 shows that the depletion of the cash reserve cannot be sustained beyond 2006, when the reserve will be less than the $100,000 required annually.

Table 2: Depletion of the reserve

Delegates at XXVIII SCAR agreed that SCAR’s influence and impact would also benefit greatly from an injection of additional funds for science. As shown in Table 2, the budget available for SCAR’s science currently continues at around $150,000 to $160,000 per year, roughly the same level it has been since 1995. Yet during the past decade there has been a significant decline in the value of the contributions, reflecting both inflation and the declining value of the dollar. It is particularly important that SCAR’s activities are adequately funded at this time, since SCAR will be playing an important role in the International Polar Year (2007–09). Bearing these various points in mind, the Delegates at XXVIII SCAR agreed that $45,000 extra per year should be found to ensure that the new science programmes can work in a fully effective manner.

The net result is that an additional $100,000 per year is required over and above present contributions, in order to support both the new science programmes and the expanded Secretariat, while maintaining a roughly 50:50 balance in expenditure between science and administration.

Some pressure on the budget can be relieved through savings. Savings will be made initially

  1. by ending publication of the SCAR Bulletin in the Polar Record (the Bulletin already appears on the SCAR web site), and
  2. by ceasing to support the costs of travel of members of the Executive Committee to the biennial SCAR Science and Delegates’ Meetings.

Delegates at XXVIII SCAR reached consensus that increasing the level of contribution by 30% in each category (apart from that of Associate Member) would be the most appropriate option (Table 3). A one-time increase would mean that funding agencies would only have to consider the topic of raising the contribution once.

Table 3: Suggested new levels of contributions.

As the SCAR reserve will have been exhausted by 2007, it will be prudent to increase core funding by increasing contributions by the beginning of 2006.