When we talk about the scale and complexity of intractable social and environmental problems, we are speaking of issues that require collective action. These challenges demand that we step beyond individual mission statements and business models to craft strategies, chart paths forward, and unlock scaled impact—together. A new guide draws...
District of Columbia Water and Sewer Authority (DC Water) created an innovative municipal bond that covers the downside risk of using green infrastructure to control stormwater runoff. By offloading risk of green infrastructure to investors, the utility created financing for a new approach- and time to get right. Now other...
Boot camp can mean the start of a long, uphill financial journey.
I’m someone who has always seen conservation as the work done by field biologists on restoration properties and in wildlife rehabilitation centers. As I sat through sessions on debt and ratios, I couldn’t help but think to myself “are all these numbers really that important?” It turns out: yes they...
How does Atlanta's Proctor Creek connect to national water management and worldwide carbon mitigation? The same way conversations about small projects connect to global biodiversity breakthroughs. / Shawn Taylor / CC BY 2.0
How can professionals who devote their lives to sustaining real places connect in virtual space? Judging from the 2021
Boot Camp, pretty intensely. Digital again for the first time, the 2021 Conservation Finance Boot Camp drew over 120 professionals from at least six time zones to learn proven...
Maine's freshwater supply benefits from fresh ideas and metrics that flow from partnerships.
To the question “should partnerships advance water quality?”, many practitioners answer: “Yes, but how exactly?” A survey at the outset of the 2021 New England
Roundtable showed 36% of participants were “not sure how to get started” with pursuing water utility partnerships, 39% were “already doing it,” and...
Risks and opportunities in natural ecosystems will prove a lot harder to count.
The understanding has spread that companies face risks and opportunities in nature, just as they do in competitive markets or under certain regulations. In that context, a new group called the Task Force on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) aims to broaden and deepen investors' interest in details from companies about...
(Courtesy Julius Pasay of the Climate Trust.) When delicate landscapes like Oregon's Zumwalt Prairie comprise the asset, the off-take partner needs to pass rigorous review.
This op/ed builds off the Enduring Arches: Building
Projects for Impact report. Gordian Knot Strategies developed that report in collaboration with the Conservation Finance Network and with the generous support of the Walton Family Foundation. The full report can be accessed here. This op/ed originally ran on ImpactAlpha...
How do you think about what makes investors, conservation professionals and members of the public better off? For the authors of a new report, this question sparked an intellectual inquiry that led to a new language for thinking about what gives a project value. The language builds off the framework...
Huge corporations have promised to zero out their carbon impact, so prices for natural carbon sinks should see upward pressure starting now. Three forest carbon finance specialists thrash out three paths to success, navigating standards and science and the occasional drag that comes with creating a marketplace in the midst...
(Courtesy Ghana Forestry Commission.) Can this soil nourish entrepreneurs as well as crops?
In Ghana, fertile forests have attracted poaching and razing. Now they're attracting a coalition that aims to restore forests and empower female farmers. Leaders aim for the restoration of 200,000 hectares of off-reserve savannah forests and woodlands by placing them under Community Resource Management Areas (CREMA). These target 100,000 hectares...
