Staking the State of Nature, With Data and Urgency

Dimitria Spathakis
In December 2022 the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) advocated urgency for an expedited 2025 timeline to more than double finance flows in nature-based solutions (NbS) to limit climate change to below 1.5°C, halt biodiversity loss, and achieve land degradation neutrality. UNEP published the second edition of its “State of...

Deep in the Weeds: Panel Pursues "Seagriculture" Investment Models

Grace Cajski
Seaweed—as a food source and beyond—has the potential to be profitable and sustainable, while supporting culturally important cuisines and strengthening the base of the marine food web. Recently, interest in cultivating seaweed, especially in the United States, has grown—but anyone interested in growing seaweed, investing in it, or processing it...
Abyssinian Roller Bird

An Incomplete Guide to Biodiversity Credits, Part One

Jinsui (Jazzy) Song
Traditional biodiversity credits give financial value to investments in projects that offset regional biodiversity losses. A biocredit is a unit of biodiversity value created through interventions to conserve, restore or sustainably manage a local site. It is the unification of positive change (or “uplift”) in biodiversity conditions, approximated by place-based...
Evergreen Articles
Elizabeth Schuster, Environmental Economist, Sustainable Economies Consulting

Elizabeth Schuster, Environmental Economist, Sustainable Economies Consulting

Partners Unite to Share Lessons Around Regenerative Agriculture, Forestry, and Conservation

Leigh Whelpton
The Network (CFN) convened partners for their 10th CFN Roundtable, hosted in Durham, NC on November 2-3, 2022. The roundtable brought together nearly 70 practitioners representing nonprofit organizations, foundations, private sector firms, governmental agencies, and universities. The event was organized around nine different panels on a variety of...

Conservation Finance Learning Lab Recap, Part Two: Harvesting a Bumper Crop of Federal Funding

Grace Cajski
The available level of funding does not have recent precedent,” said Leigh Whelpton, Executive Director of the Network. This windfall of potential funding is certainly beneficial to practitioners, who often rely on initial government support to attract private investors.
Colorado forest

Conservation Finance Learning Lab Recap, Part One: What's a Carbon Market?

Katie Michels
In this session, panelists from a variety of organizations described their engagement in carbon markets. Spencer Meyer, Head of Science at the carbon-exchange company NCX, moderated a Zoom panel of professionals from not-for-profits, for-profits, carbon project developers, carbon project sellers, and more. Steph Harris, Director of Carbon Markets at carbon...
Getting closer than the pebbles in this stream

Remote technology can carry data faster and finer than humans in the field reliably can. (Photo by ihamr via Flickr Creative Commons.) 

Detecting Change in Conservation: The Value of Remote Sensing

Sam Feibel
The value in land increases when you conserve it- but conserved land grows and moves in many ways. Large and small land-stewardship organizations are investing in remote technology for clearer, more investable pictures of what they're conserving. And investors are learning a new language.
Nobody in conservation finance can fly far who flies alone

Photo by Dhrvaraj S, via Flickr Creative Commons. 

Centering People at the Heart of Nature-Based Carbon Projects

Stanley Tan
Countries and companies are indeed looking to restore forests and other ecosystems to offset carbon output. Nature-based carbon projects protect or restore ecosystems, like a tropical forest in Indonesia, and generate carbon credits based on the emissions avoided or sequestered. Typically, third-party developers put these projects together for implementation by...
Tools for Financing Conservation
Tools on wall

Launching the Conservation Finance Network Toolkit

Vince Tenorio, Spencer Meyer
We are pleased to announce the launch of a new series called the Network Toolkit. This series of articles focuses on individual tools practitioners can use. Our goal is to span the range of comfort levels our readers have – from simple to challenging.
USDA-funded water project in Oklahoma

Conservation Partnerships with Water Utilities

Eve Boyce
This article by Eve Boyce and Marcy Lyman is part of the Network Toolkit, a resource designed for professionals who want to learn or communicate about the industry. In an increasing number of communities across the country, utilities are working with conservation groups to ensure the ecosystem services...
Larch trees in forest

Ballot Measures

Nathalie Woolworth
This article by Nathalie Woolworth and Hazel Wong is part of the Network Toolkit, a resource designed for professionals who want to learn or communicate about the industry. Ballot measures, also known as initiatives or propositions, are instruments of direct democracy that allow voters to directly shape public...
Water holding tank

Using State Revolving Funds for Land Conservation

Maria Martinez
This article by Maria Martinez is part of the Network Toolkit, a resource designed for professionals who want to learn or communicate about the industry. State revolving funds (SRFs) have been used for decades as a source of low-cost financing for a variety of water-infrastructure projects.