By Arturo de Frias Marques (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
This article was originally published on Ecosystem Marketplace.
“Environmental NGOs, major banks, and strategic consulting groups rarely agree on anything, but almost all agree that our governments haven’t allocated nearly enough money to meeting the climate and conservation challenge – certainly not enough to slow or reverse the trends, and definitely not enough to roll with the calamitous changes that lie ahead.
WWF, Credit Suisse, and McKinsey & Company, for example, say we need an additional $200 to $300 billion per year to protect the living ecosystems that support life as we know it – but where to get it? Part of the answer lies in ramping up conservation finance, which can broadly be understood as finance that provides conservation impacts and returns for an investor. Low interest rates, demand from conservation-minded impact investors, and development of projects with attractive risk/return profiles has meant the sector has seen some recent momentum.
Of course, investment returns are not easily associated with conservation. But as understanding of the dependence of economies and wellbeing on ecosystem services grows, businesses and consumers are prepared to pay for conservation friendly products and services, and governments are prepared to establish regulations and incentives ensuring conservation goals. As a result, it is not difficult to envision investment opportunities resulting from the development of these sustainable services, products and supply chains as well as from projects that provide environmental credits for sale in voluntary and regulated environmental markets…”
Read on at: Ecosystem Marketplace.
