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News focused exclusively on financing
environmental conservation
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| | New Conservation Finance Network Website Will Be a Hub for News, Events and Community
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| We are pleased to announce the launch of the new Conservation Finance Network (CFN) website. This fresh site represents a new partnership between the CFN program at Island Press, Yale Center for Business and the Environment (CBEY), and The Conservation Fund (TCF). It will bring together news, training opportunities, and a professional community for conservation finance. With this new partnership, it is our goal to stimulate high-leverage conversations and disseminate expert knowledge about how to finance land conservation in the United States and internationally. By doing so, we aim to collectively support CFN’s mission to expand the use of innovative funding and financing strategies.
Our monthly email update, the new program newsletter of CFN, will feature news and multimedia content. It will invite readers to participate in CFN’s highly regarded boot camp training courses and other activities. It will also promote Yale’s Nature’s Returns webinar series and its podcasts. You are invited to visit our website to register for webinars and send us story ideas. Please share this notice and future newsletters with your colleagues who may be interested in joining the conservation finance dialogue or subscribing to our updates.
Kat Friedrich, News Editor and Reporter, Yale Center for Business and the Environment
Brad Gentry, Associate Dean for Professional Practice; Professor in the Practice; Co-Director of the Yale Center for Business and the Environment; Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies
Spencer Meyer, NatureNet Fellow, Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies and The Nature Conservancy
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| White House Values Societal Benefits of Ecosystem Conservation
The White House has issued a directive to point federal agencies toward building ecosystem-services valuation into their plans, investments and regulations. This directive, released on Oct. 7, will help agencies synthesize conservation’s ecosystem benefits with its value to society.
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| Impact Investors Find Value in Smallholder Agriculture
How do investment funds build triple-bottom-line social and environmental priorities into agricultural financing? The Global Landscapes Forum in Paris in December demonstrated some examples of how these funds support smallholder value chains. In addition to financial returns, investors increasingly also demand positive social and environmental impacts.
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| Environmental Impact Bonds Pay for Performance
Pay for Performance (PFP) Bonds, also known as Pay for Success Bonds or Social Benefit Bonds, have been gaining significant traction during the past several years as a way to entice private capital to help address challenging social problems. Now, a group called Blue Forest Conservation is exploring the nation’s first environmentally-focused impact bond.
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| Video: A Conversation with Joe Whitworth, President of The Freshwater Trust
What role can big data play in conservation finance? Andy Beck, a graduate student at Yale University, interviewed Joe Whitworth about his ideas on using big data to better manage the world's resources sustainably and profitably.
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| Private Investment in Water Resources Can Help Solve U.S. Supply Crises
“We don’t have a water crisis, we have a water-management crisis,” said Joe Whitworth, president of The Freshwater Trust, a nonprofit organization based in Portland, Ore., when he spoke at the Social Capital Markets Conference (SOCAP15) in San Francisco on Oct. 8.
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| Explore Our Conservation Finance Video Playlists
While launching our website, we’ve created a video library of playlists you can explore. Visit the videos below - and our new YouTube channel - to learn the nuts and bolts of conservation finance techniques and see how they are applied in the field.
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| How Does the Global Commodity Collapse Impact Forest Conservation?
When commodity prices take a dive, common sense says forests should be safer from development — but it isn’t necessarily so.
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| The State of the Market for Ecosystem Services
Over the last 15 years, some "payments for ecosystem services" projects have clearly succeeded while others have sputtered. As more projects roll out, practitioners are figuring out how to make them work more consistently.
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| Indonesian Forest Fires, Amazon Tipping Points, And the Business Case for Investing in Reforestation
Both expectations and leading practices on corporate engagement with forest issues are broadening beyond sourcing and supply chain management to include active investment in reforestation and ecological restoration. Without restoration, businesses will face a growing number of landscapes with ecosystem malfunction risk, which in turn will translate into business risk.
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| Creating a Commons: Sustainable Fishing and Hunting in the Colombian Amazon
Agreements to establish local rules for fishing have been strikingly successful elsewhere in the Amazon, but they are new to Colombia's Puerto Nariño fishing and hunting communities.
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| Weyerhaeuser to Buy Timber Rival Plum Creek for $8.4 Billion
Weyerhaeuser Co. agreed to buy Plum Creek Timber Co. for about $8.4 billion to create a real estate investment trust that will be the largest private owner of timberland in the United States.
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| Climate Change Means Floods, Droughts, and Downpours. Should Water Be More Prominent in Climate Accord?
Many climate impacts are felt through water - which is why several thought leaders from the water space gathered at the United Nations climate talks in Paris to discuss just where water fits into a global climate agreement.
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| From Paris: Finance Innovations Help Island Nations Adapt to Climate Change
The path the world is headed down includes using nature-based solutions to foster sustainable development and deliver a low-carbon future. Ideas like the Seychelles debt restructuring will help us achieve this in a way that benefits governments, communities and nature.
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| Improving Tools for Quantifying the Effectiveness of Conservation
One of the primary tools for maintaining the diversity of life on Earth has been the establishment of legally protected areas. But conservation is still lacking quantifiable answers to important questions about their true effectiveness: Do protected areas conserve species, habitats, and other forms of biodiversity? Do protected areas protect the health, opportunities, and income of local people?
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