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Provided with the generous support of the
Two men working at the frontier of conservation finance -- Bill Moomaw and Don Hey -- joined us online for an expert chat. Each is pioneering a new approach to ecosystems services and conservation finance.
Dr. Donald Hey is the President and Co-founder of The Wetlands Initiative based in Chicago, Illinois. The Wetlands Initiative, with critical financing from the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago, is in the process of developing a remarkable nutrient farming pilot project. The water quality restoration effort, to be built on a 1,326 acre site near Hennepin, Illinois, will cost an estimated $44 million. In spearheading this project and leading The Wetlands Initiantive, Don Hey has been a key advocate for market-based solutions to the problem of wetland loss, contending that only a solution that will pay for itself over time can be widely adopted across expansive watersheds such as the Mississippi Valley. Additional information on The Wetlands Initiative at its Goose Pond nutrient farming project can be found at www.wetlands-initiative.org.
Dr. William Moomaw is Professor of International Environmental Policy at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, where he currently serves as Director for Tufts Climate Initiative (TCI). He was a coordinating lead author of the Year 2001 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change chapter on greenhouse gas emissions reduction, and was a lead author of three IPCC reports (1995 and 2007). As a leader in the IPCC process, Moomaw shares the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with IPCC colleages around the globe. In the past year, with collegues at Tufts and other universities, Moomaw has worked closely with the Dutch Government, the United Nations and the World Bank to devise a new international Forest Financing Mechanism that will contribute to the conservation of tropical forests. Bill will share his insights into the creation of the innovative financing package, as well as his thoughts on changing U.S. approaches to climate change, during our discussion. For additional information on the concepts behind the Forest Financing Mechanism, please see: http://environment.tufts.edu/downloads/DesigningaForestFinancingMechanism.pdf.
To listen to a recording of this online expert chat, please click here. Don Hey's slide presentation can be viewed here.
On September 12, 2008 the Conservation Finance Forum held an expert chat with Story Clark and Rafael Asenjo. Clark and Asenjo spoke about the state of conservation finance in the US, Chile and across the Western Hemisphere. They also discussed the upcoming conference on Conservation Capital in the Americas, to be held in January 2009 in Valdivia, Chile. Both Clark and Asenjo will be evaluators in the essay competition to be held in advance of the conference. Students selected through the contest will be offered scholarships to the January event in Chile.
Story Clark is a consultant, author and teacher specializing in land conservation strategy and finance. She advises conservation organizations and foundations in the Rocky Mountain Region and elsewhere. Having focused on land conservation and land use planning for over 30 years, she has worked with a wide variety of organizations, including the Jackson Hole Land Trust, the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. Her insight into land and its protection also comes from her experience as a county planner for Teton County, Wyoming. As a well-known author and teacher of conservation finance, Story Clark has served as one of the principal organizers of the Conservation Finance Camps held at Yale University over the past two years. Her highly regarded book, A Field Guide to Conservation Finance, was published by Island Press in 2007.
Rafael Asenjo is a lawyer. He has had an essential role in crafting the current framework for environmental management in Chile. He actively participated in the creation of the nation's current 19.400 Environmental Legislation. He then was appointed as the first Executive Director of the Chilean National Commission for the Environment. Mr. Asenjo then became a senior United Nations official, working out of New York and Rome, and had key responsibilities for the the management of the Global Environmental Facility (GEF) established by the UN and the World Bank. He has since returned to Chile to direct a $25 million project that is charged with re-organizing Chile's public-private, marine and terrestrial, protected areas system. A critical challenge associated with this effort is the need to ensure the financial sustainability of an integrated system of protected areas in Chile.
To listen to a recording of the event go to the event page (click here) on the Government Innovators Network.
(You will need to register to listen to the recording of the event, however your Government Innovators Network registration will be valid for future Conservation Finance Innovation Network events)
Listen to the Conservation Finance Forum's posted expert chat with Ernest Cook of the Trust for Public Land and Michael Jenkins of Forest Trends and the Katoomba Group. Cook and Jenkins lead two distinctive efforts to bring information on conservation finance to practitioners in the United States and throughout the world.
On the May 14th Internet broadcast, Ernest Cook, Senior Vice President of the Trust for Public Land and Director of the Conservation Finance Program, leads a presentation about TPL's groundbreaking new online Conservation Almanac (www.conservationalmanac.org). The Conservation Almanac is the first comprehensive source of information about the state of land conservation in America. It contains original data for each of the 50 states on dollars spent on land conservation and acres protected by the states and the federal government, as well as a rundown on the policies and conservation programs at work in each state. TPL's Andrew duMoulin and MaryBruce Alford are the project leaders for the Almanac and lead an interactive "test drive" of the Almanac during the broadcast.
Michael Jenkins, publisher of Ecosystem Marketplace (www.ecosystemmarketplace.com) and founding president of Forest Trends (www.forest-trends.org), offers insight into the Katoomba Group's mission and achievements in promoting the growth of ecosystem service markets worldwide. He also discusses the Ecosystem Marketplace website, a leading international source of information on systems that provide payments for ecosystem services (PES). Finally, Jenkins will preview the Katoomba XII, the twelfth international meeting of the group, which will take place in Washington, D.C. this June.
Listen to the recording at:
http://www.innovations.harvard.edu/xchat-transcript.html?chid=191
Listen to the recording of the expert chat on conservation philanthropy from Wednesday, 27 February 2008. Our guest experts were Tom Curren (Project Director, Northeast Land Trust Consortium at the Pew Charitable Trusts); and Gowher Rizvi (presently Director, Ash Institute for Democratic Governance and Innovation, Harvard's Kennedy School of Government ). In addition, guest co-host Matt Zieper from the Conservation Finance Program at the Trust for Public Land joined the conversation during the question and answer period. To hear the archived version, sign in here: http://www.innovations.harvard.edu/xchat-transcript.html?chid=161.
On Thursday, November 15, 2007 Pat Coady and Ian Johnson, former World Bank Vice President for Sustainability, chatted online about the future of conservation finance both in the United States and internationally. Listen to the recording of the event at http://www.innovations.harvard.edu/xchat-transcript.html?chid=111.
(You will need to register to listen to the recording of the event, however your Government Innovators Network registration will be valid for future Conservation Finance Innovation Network events)
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