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...
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...
How do you ascribe dollars to this? (Photo by Bill Mullins, courtesy the Conservation Fund)
Island Press’ publication of Valuing Nature: A Handbook for
by William Ginn comes 15 years after his first book helped launch what became the
Network. While the lessons captured in prior works still ring true, the conservation finance field has experienced rapid growth in recent years...
New York City's Brooklyn Bridge Park, here on a morning during the Covid shutdown, blends public and private capital to broaden open space access. More neighborhoods need parks like this.
America has a long tradition of creating public parks and open space, from the rugged wilds of our National Parks and National Forests to the pocket park down the road from our homes. Today, in the midst of Covid-19 social distancing, those of us who are fortunate to have access...
Forests like this can grow in steadier fashion when ratings for green bonds become steadier as well. (Photo by David Gierth, accessed via Pexels.)
Given the short history and dynamic state of the green bond market, wide variation exists in external review processes — based on regions, frameworks and evaluation parameters. Green bonds can fund energy, transportation, buildings or natural capital such as conservation. Work so far on certification shows how investors can keep...
