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The need for global forest conservation has seldom been more prominent — or more urgent.
Not only does deforestation cause the loss of untold biodiversity, it contributes between 20 percent and 25 percent of all global greenhouse gases. This stunning fact led policymakers at the December 2007 COP-13 climate conference to agree to fund a market-based mechanism that would pay developing countries to stop cutting their forests.
Such market-based approaches have become a hallmark of The Nature Conservancy, which now applies them across habitats from forests to fresh water to marine. William Ginn, the director of conservation markets and investments at the Conservancy, spoke with us about the state of forest conservation and his new charge to expand the Conservancy's private-equity and market-based strategies.
Nature.org: What do you see as the greatest challenge to forest conservation globally?
Bill Ginn: Starting at the top: climate change. If we can prevent or stop the loss of forests, we can do a lot to stabilize our climate.
Forests have a wonderful attribute that’s unique to living things in that they accumulate and remove carbon from the atmosphere. By developing global markets for carbon and getting people to invest, we’re not only creating solutions for carbon — we're also sending market signals that say we value keeping trees and planting more.
So we’ve been working in partnership with the World Bank on pilot programs to demonstrate the viability of these investments.
Nature.org: You’ve been a major proponent of these market-based conservation strategies. Why?
BG: Well, if you look at the world’s economy, which after all drives much of what happens to the environment, it’s about $55 trillion a year of goods and services. Much of that is derived from the use of this planet’s natural resources — its water, its forests, its soils.
The reality is all the Conservancy’s resources are very, very small compared to the scale of the economy. So my theory has been that impacting the world market — and its $55 trillion a year — is the way to stem the loss of natural resources across the globe.
Nature.org: What are the best ways to influence those markets for the good of forests?
BG: Probably the thing we’re most known for is our partnership with private investors to purchase and manage timberlands. In the past year we’ve acquired about a million acres in the United States through deals in 18 different states, starting with our deal to purchase more than 161,000 ecologically critical acres in the Adirondacks in June 2007.
Creating ways for the market to distinguish between sustainably and unsustainably harvested products is another example, and that is most often demonstrated through third-party certification like Forest Stewardship Council or Sustainable Forestry Initiative labels. Consumers are demanding more organic food and sustainable products, and the same could be true with forest products. So we are working in lots of places to increase certified forests so that we can affect the marketplace.
Nature.org: How might a market approach work in other habitats?
BG: One example is creating property rights in marine fisheries. We’ve got a terrific project in California where we’ve been acquiring fishing rights in Monterey Bay and are poised to release those back to fishermen with our own biological restrictions. There are lots of these new property rights that we can conceivably intersect in imaginative ways.
Nature.org: Any examples in the freshwater realm?
BG: We’re involved in the Penobscot River dam removal in Maine. Before all the permits are in place to take down the dams and reestablish traditional flows across that landscape, we're working with private investors to buy some of the income from the hydro facilities and help defray our costs.
On the Yangtze River in China, we’re working to get part of the hydropower income set aside for biodiversity conservation. In places like Quito, Ecuador, a portion of the city's water fees goes to protect watersheds that are crucial to the provision of fresh water.
So there are lots of ways we can use “valuing nature” increase our effectiveness.
Nature.org: You even wrote a book about these techniques called Investing in Nature. What led you to do that?
BG: The Nature Conservancy now has these massive goals that are orders of magnitude greater than what we’ve achieved in the past. Our challenge is this: How do we become more successful?
A major part of the answer is engaging the ingenuity and resources of the private sector more directly in our work. So I wanted to write a book that captured what we knew and suggested how we might think about these opportunities in the future. It was my way of contributing to the learning that’s going on throughout the Conservancy on this topic.
Let us know what you think of this article and the best directions for future conservation efforts.
Nature picture credits (top to bottom, left to right): Photo © Mark Godfrey/TNC (International Paper site, North Carolina); © Mark Godfrey/TNC (William Ginn)
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