Quick quiz: Do you know what “REDD+” stands for? You will soon. Conservation finance is sure to be one of 2016’s hot topics.
Already, reduced emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (or REDD+) is gaining momentum as a result of the Paris climate accords, at which forests were an unexpected centerpiece. As our friends at Forest Trends point out, Article 6 of the new agreement effectively created a new carbon trading mechanism (without mentioning the words “carbon” or “trading” or “markets”). Stopping tropical deforestation would cut greenhouse gas emissions by up to one-third, and far more cheaply than comparable reductions in the U.S. or Europe.
The third Conservation Finance conference, by invitation only, will convene in New York on January 21 to take stock of the considerable progress since last year’s gathering.
This year’s (invitation-only) meeting will build on the rubric of “investable, scalable, and repeatable” as conservation finance increasingly goes mainstream. Topics will include: new deal structures that blend public and private capital to protect critical natural assets; green bonds to scale ecosystem-related infrastructure; emerging ecosystem markets for marine-based conservation; and innovative ecosystem-based start-ups.
ImpactAlpha has chronicled the growth of this gathering from a small practitioner’s workshop in San Francisco to last January’s conference at Credit Suisse in New York.
Watch the video: “Conservation Finance: Scalable, Repeatable, Investable.”
