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...
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...
The Washington Farmland Trust, which crafted the Conservation Note, provided this image.
How does a farmer with no desire to keep growing crops become a catalyst for financial value and land preservation? The Washington Farmland Trust worked with a farmer at the end of his career to craft a financial package that would keep his land from developers, sustain ecosystem services, and...
What makes efforts to preserve land harmonize with efforts to promote commerce? In this article, we review several examples. Entrepreneurs learn to bolster terrain for hikers (who drink beer), historically sensitive consumers, and fellow merchants. These examples show how creative approaches to promoting conservation and community-based development can yield ongoing...
"It didn't surprise me that interest in last month's Chesapeake
Intensive course was robust. The event brought together land trust staff and partners from across the watershed with a faculty of national and regional experts to discuss forest carbon offsets, revolving water funds, voluntary surcharges, state revolving funds, pay-for-success outcomes-based contracting and financing and more."
In this webinar, we will hear about two water fund models that differ in both the types of watersheds that they seek to protect and the types of finance they seek to leverage. We will then discuss the lessons learned from each model and compare their potential for scale and replication in different types of geographic settings. Ashley Allen Jones (i2 Capital) will present her work with the Revolving Water Fund, an innovative conservation finance model that aligns the interests of farmers, conservationists, municipalities, regulators and impact investors to address conservation on a watershed scale. The model, piloted in the Brandywine-Christina Watershed in Pennsylvania and Delaware, invests in structural agricultural BMPs in partnership with farmers and conservation organizations, and then transfers such reductions to municipal entities and water companies as a mechanism for water quality compliance. In so doing, the Revolving Water Fund creates a sustained pool of capital to fund priority agriculture-based pollution reduction strategies. Spencer Meyer (Highstead Foundation, Sebago Clean Waters Initiative) will introduce the Sebago Clean Waters initiative, a conservation collaborative and water fund serving the Greater Portland, Maine region in an effort to secure permanently the forests that naturally filter the drinking water for 1/6th of...
Swiss finance giant Credit Suisse has partnered with The World Bank to issue a $28.6m bond aimed at financing the protection and restoration of fresh and saltwater resources and habitats.
"Through this 4th EIB Challenge, we will select 2 cities along the Mississippi River to issue the next Environmental Impact Bonds (EIBs). If you are a representative of a city agency, utility, water authority, or sewer authority, we want to work with you, and encourage you to read through our materials and consider submitting a proposal."
In February 2019, the EPA’s assistant administrator for water issued a memo updating the agency’s water quality trading policy “to promote market-based mechanisms.” The memo includes six principles intended to clarify aspects of the federal water quality trading program, provide tools and incentives to states and local governments to implement trading programs, and promote increased investment in conservation.
Environmental credit trading programs have gained traction for pollutants like carbon emissions, at least in concept. Is water quality trading the next frontier? The mechanism offers the possibility of more flexible and cost-effective water quality control, but in contrast to some environmental credits, markets have struggled to gain momentum.
