Peter Weisberg, The Climate Trust
June 3, 2016

The Conservation Finance Practitioner Roundtable—a new initiative launched by the Conservation Finance Network with financial support from USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service—brings together all of the conservation-finance-related Conservation Innovation Grant awardees and their supporting partners.

The CFP Roundtable is a forum, scheduled to meet 2-3 times per year over the next three years, for conservation finance practitioners and stakeholders to convene, deliberate obstacles and challenges, and generate solutions to increase the amount of private capital, institutional investments, and other sources of non-Federal funding dedicated to natural resource conservation on both public and private lands.

In May 2016, The Climate Trust presented the following overview of the launch of Climate Trust Capital and its investment fund. The presentation covered the organizational history of The Climate Trust, the value proposition of Climate Trust Capital, and various policy and market recommendations to enable the success of its specialized carbon investment fund (Fund I).

The CFP Roundtable confirmed that Climate Trust Capital’s ability to think long-term in carbon markets is a unique proposition. These conservation finance practitioners praised the David and Lucile Packard Foundation for being willing to take risks on this emerging market via a program related investment—while recognizing the key role The Climate Trust’s “buyer of last resort” structure has played in reducing risk and encouraging the deployment of that capital. The network agreed to work together to continue to promote new mechanisms to reduce environmental market risks (like buyers of last resort), replicating the World Bank’s Pilot Auction Facility in the United States, and providing guarantees, credit enhancements and first loss capital.

Watch this space as Climate Trust Capital continues to roll out Fund I, aimed at maximizing environmental returns.

Image credit: Flickr/Matoff