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...
In May, the Conservation Finance Network spoke to Nathalie Woolworth, conservation finance manager of the United States Forest Service about the Innovative Finance for National Forests program. This program offers $1.8 million in grants for the development and deployment of innovative financial models to support resilience of the National Forests.
How do you ascribe dollars to this? (Photo by Bill Mullins, courtesy the Conservation Fund)
Island Press’ publication of Valuing Nature: A Handbook for Impact Investing by William Ginn comes 15 years after his first book helped launch what became the Conservation Finance 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...
Farmers' informal networks can drive progress for finance, food and the farming business. The RAI visited pioneers in Iowa in 2018.
Achieving the transition from conventional to regenerative agriculture will require a major shift in the strategy and behavior of many of America’s two million farmers. For a farmer, farming for healthy soils, ecosystems, communities and climate conflicts at many points with conventional agriculture practice. Wider success comes only from the...
This "beyond organic" farm in New York's Hudson Valley earned capital from a REIT that saw its growth potential.
The traditional landscape of farmland ownership and financing in the United States thwarts the adoption of regenerative agriculture. First, farmland is expensive. Farm real estate prices have doubled in the last decade. But models have emerged to power regenerative practices forward. These include concessionary capital, financing from real estate investment...
(Photo courtesy of Pexels.com) Farmers can deliver steeper returns to themselves, their ecosystem, and their economy when their insurance system makes more sense.
Across the political spectrum, most Americans have favorable opinions of farmers and are happy with the idea that the federal government provides financial assistance to help pay for crop insurance. If they knew crop insurance's full cost, that might change. This system, while well-intentioned, leaves out the majority of farmers...
How deeply can regenerative farming affect the way societies value farming- and farmers build value? (Photo courtesy of Lukas via Pexels.)
This article, by The Regenerative Agriculture Initiative (RAI) team at the Yale Center for Business and the Environment (CBEY), is the first in a series on key opportunities to accelerate regenerative agriculture in the United States. At today’s rate of soil degradation, some scientists predict the world’s topsoil could be...
