What could be interesting about forest conservation finance?

Forest conservation provides us with the critical goods and services we need in our communities. But who pays for it?


Our forests provide low-cost natural infrastructure solutions for filtering our water, cleaning our air, reducing impacts from floods and keeping us healthy.

"Wildlands and Woodlands, Farmlands and Communities: Broadening the Vision for New England" lays out a vision for protecting 70 percent of New England as forests and at least 7 percent more as farmland.

Why does a New England initiative matter to Western forest owners?

The report documents ongoing threats to the ecosystems and economies that connect our rural communities with our urban centers. Threats like the double-whammy of land-use changes and climate-change impacts. The threats are not isolated. And averting them takes money.

Conservation-finance experts put their heads together on how to raise the capital needed to achieve solutions for reducing the impacts.

The group made the case for expanding and replicating some existing successes, such as the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) Regional Conservation Partnership Program, which already has invested $53 million in projects in the Northeast. Landowners also play a role through public-private partnerships.

Wildlands and Woodlands proposed three actions to accelerate solutions:

"First, that means bolstering federal conservation-finance initiatives, such as some of the conservation investments being considered in the 2018 Farm Bill. Second, it means calling on our states to up their game with state conservation investment goals. Third, we need to continue to bring our best conservation and finance minds together to identify new opportunities. Then we will be poised to show sustainable investors that New England is a good bet for their investments in sustainable fiber and food, clean water and carbon sequestration."