Conservation Finance Network

The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) and First Climate announced today an agreement that will move credits from EPRI’s Ohio River Basin Water Quality Trading Project to international credit trading markets. This is a unique collaborative between a water quality project and an environmental asset credit broker to provide access to some of the world’s largest environmental credit buyers.

The Environmental Protection Agency is offering $14 million to fund projects that help reduce harmful runoff into Great Lakes waterways through the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative. That includes green infrastructure, farmer-led outreach and education, manure management on farms, and a market-based approach called “water quality trading.”

Conservation could be on the verge of a blue revolution. This year there is growing talk about using entrepreneurial finance to capture atmospheric carbon in revived marine and coastal ecosystems such as coral reefs, mangroves, salt marshes and sea grasses. Conservationists call it “blue carbon.”

After seven years of drought in California that drained aquifers and brought many farmers to the brink, legislators in Sacramento crafted a bunch of rules governing water usage. Those rules, many of which kick in next year, cap how much water farmers and cities can use.

Over the past decade, First Nations have created a robust conservation economy in Canada’s Great Bear Rainforest, one of the largest old-growth temperate rainforests left in the world, through investments in sustainable development and environmental stewardship projects that link the health of nature to the wellbeing of indigenous communities, according to a new report.

Morgan Stanley Wealth Management has created six new “impact portfolios” of publicly traded investment options to reach a wider swath of investors who want to create environmental and social impact alongside financial returns.

Timber managers are beginning to look beyond the trees to make money on their forestland portfolios as well as to transition the asset class as an antidote to climate change.

In just one week, farmers have pledged more than 700,000 acres to Indigo Ag’s new carbon sequestration initiative. The program, which launched on June 12, will pay farmers to use regenerative farming practices and remove carbon from the atmosphere.

The World Bank issued the first “green” bonds in 2008, and the market has since grown steadily, expected to top $250bn in issuance by the end of 2019, according to the Climate Bonds Initiative. But amid all this accelerating activity, the planet's wildlife — on land and in the oceans — has been mostly left behind.

USAID will guarantee up to $35 million of loans made by Circulate Capital to incentivize private capital investment and advance development objectives in the recycling value chain in South and Southeast Asia.