Powering Conservation Finance
Rewriting the Rules to Finance Restoration Faster
Currently, the protection and restoration of our water, healthy soil, and wildlife resources are static processes, starved for creativity and thirsty for private investment. Our projects help build responsible environmental markets and find comparable program models to drive faster innovations in restoration projects, from streamlining land transactions to advancing opportunities for innovation.
To expedite restoration, we are advancing conditions that attract private sector investment in public environmental goals, and prioritizing efficient outcomes to generate return. Hand in hand with enabling private investment, we are revolutionizing legislation and policy models so that states can open their doors to large-scale, sustained investment from both the private and the public sector. With these tools deployed, restoration has the chance to happen faster, at lower risk, and more cost-effectively.
Did You Know?
Globally, profit-seeking investment in environmental conservation is expected to grow to more than $200 billion per year in the coming years.
The $3+ billion US mitigation banking industry and the $850 million global carbon market are evidence of how ripe the opportunities are to generate restoration investment from private capital sources.
Current global investment in biodiversity is only at 60-70% of the annual need of $200 billion (source)
Why It Matters
Innovators from different sectors have big ideas that could help with conservation and restoration roadblocks. Rather than simply accept the process and regulatory status quo, we believe in the need to find, nurture and learn from new concepts and models, even when it means deliberately breaking old rules. The ecological situation is urgent, and we must innovate to progress at a pace and scale that current restoration calamities require.
Our Projects
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Maryland was the first state to pass a Comprehensive Conservation Finance Policy that makes clear how the state can be a purchaser of conservation outcomes. More states adopting policies like this will open the door to large-scale or sustained investment by government in the private delivery of public restoration and green infrastructure needs.
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The benefits of federal land acquisition and conservation for the public good are increasingly obvious - air and water quality, climate change mitigation, wildlife habitat, and human health and recreation to name a few - just as development pressures on America's lands grow.
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We believe government can find, nurture, and learn from new tools that help keep pace with technology and break away from the status quo of slow regulatory change. We have evaluated an approach called a "regulatory sandbox" – a flexible testing ground for new innovations – and applied that to conservation, for faster outcomes.
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