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 public open space has followed suit, with low-income communities and communities of color markedly deprived of access to privately conserved open spaces and less frequently affiliated with private land conservation as land donors, visitors, members, staff or board.
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 of an ecological upheaval. The market seems poised to grow large enough for all approaches- and all manner of questions.
In Ghana, fertile forests have attracted poaching and razing. Now they're attracting a coalition that aims to restore forests and empower female farmers. Leaders aim for the restoration of 200,000 hectares of off-reserve savannah forests and woodlands by placing them under Community Resource Management Areas (CREMA). These target 100,000 hectares of degraded shea parklands and the creation of 25,500 hectares of modified forest in now severely degraded reserves.
the southeast corner of Georgia, bisected by Interstate 95, sits the county of Camden. One side of the county features a complex coastline highlighted by the winding East River and Satilla Rivers and their tributaries. The Cumberland barrier island sits atop these river mouths dampening the wave action from the Atlantic. The result is a mosaic of pristine marshland and tidal creeks eventually giving way to maritime forests, swamp forests, and pine flats. It's also a testament to the crux of collaboration and conservation.
