Conservation Finance Network

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...

Two recent investment projects are raising significant money to try to show that taking natural capital investment to the next level is not only possible, but potentially a key piece for future institutional asset managers to include in a balanced portfolio. No matter how you slice it, to get a...

While more public funding sources have emerged recently for conservation finance, particularly around working farms, landowners with means and motivation remain a staple of the private conservation process. These landowners are largely white, and their properties most often located in rural and suburban areas. The distribution of conserved land and...

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...

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...

Easements unlock value for landowners and preserve land for everyone else. With challenges to our ecosystem and economy coming faster and from more directions, conservation leaders need tools that apply more quickly or in quirkier situations. This toolkit looks over a range of techniques that extend conservation to situations where...

Forest carbon offset companies see a source of credit, and value, in small forest owners. These owners, in turn, see offsets as a way to sustain their assets. What does this emerging field need to normalize about valuation, verification and communication to make deeper financial and ecological impact?

Island Press’ publication of Valuing Nature: A Handbook for

Investments that combine financial returns with social and/or environmental benefits.

by William Ginn comes 15 years after his first book helped launch what became the

The practice of raising and managing capital to support land, water, and natural resource conservation.

Network. While the lessons captured in prior works still ring true, the conservation finance field has experienced rapid growth in recent years...