Evergreen Articles
A bird looking to the left, camouflaging its face, illustrates the urgency and variability of biodiversity.

Finding the Frontier for Biodiversity Finance

In June, conservation finance practitioners reconnected in a stone skyscraper overlooking New York City's Madison Square Park for Credit Suisse's annual conference. This story excerpts a dialogue between Emma Crystal, the bank's chief sustainability officer, and a BlackRock research leader named Chris Weber.
Delaware farm

Farm in Georgetown, Delaware / Michele Dorsey Walfred / CC BY-SA 2.0

Enabling Chesapeake Bay’s Landowners to Benefit from Carbon and Ecosystem Services Through Aggregation

Avery Siler
Organizations across the country, and across land types, are working to implement aggregation projects to help family forest owners, small farmers, and all those who own smaller parcels of land. These projects serve farmer whose priorities may differ internally and in comparison to commercial operations.
Recovery across the world came before a panel of experts at Yale in January.

The International Society for Tropical Forestry’s 2022 conference at Yale emphasized scale and the importance of COVID-19 recovery efforts for the “Decade on Ecosystem Restoration.”

Financing Tropical Forests: Lessons For Scaling From Yale's Annual Conference

Nadeem Demian
In looking at forest restoration finance in a tropical context, three experts at a Yale-sponsored panel spoke of clearer images from space and more inclusive planning on the ground.
BIg Spring Run development site, with wetlands

(Photo by Sam Feibel/Franklin & Marshall College.) This restored wetland brings life back to a Pennsylvania site that once posed a threat to the Chesapeake Bay. 

Removing Sediment to Restore Wetlands Clears Revenue Paths

Sam Feibel
By removing "legacy sediment" from dam diversions, scientists can expand wetlands and their conservation oomph. In Pennsylvania, a commercial real estate firm learned how this wetland protection can create more developable land - and more profit.
(Photo by Mark Pouley via Creative Commons) The Skagit Valley in a reconsidered light.

Making conservation relevant for a broader community, considering new sources of funding, and protecting landscape: practice can incorporate all of these in a cycle. 

Placing Fairness at the Root: Three Case Studies in Conservation Finance Justice

Katie Michels
Environmental justice in land conservation requires practitioners to slow down and consider the foundations that exclude or enable relationships with and control over land. The following stories highlight three organizations using conservation finance strategies to advance environmental justice outcomes. In each story, participants have asked: why is this so?
Tools for Financing Conservation
Tools on wall

Launching the Conservation Finance Network Toolkit

Vince Tenorio, Spencer Meyer
We are pleased to announce the launch of a new series called the Network Toolkit. This series of articles focuses on individual tools practitioners can use. Our goal is to span the range of comfort levels our readers have – from simple to challenging.
USDA-funded water project in Oklahoma

Conservation Partnerships with Water Utilities

Eve Boyce
This article by Eve Boyce and Marcy Lyman is part of the Network Toolkit, a resource designed for professionals who want to learn or communicate about the industry. In an increasing number of communities across the country, utilities are working with conservation groups to ensure the ecosystem services...
Larch trees in forest

Ballot Measures

Nathalie Woolworth
This article by Nathalie Woolworth and Hazel Wong is part of the Network Toolkit, a resource designed for professionals who want to learn or communicate about the industry. Ballot measures, also known as initiatives or propositions, are instruments of direct democracy that allow voters to directly shape public...
Water holding tank

Using State Revolving Funds for Land Conservation

Maria Martinez
This article by Maria Martinez is part of the Network Toolkit, a resource designed for professionals who want to learn or communicate about the industry. State revolving funds (SRFs) have been used for decades as a source of low-cost financing for a variety of water-infrastructure projects.