FOREST TRENDS ASSOCIATION
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Mission Statement
Forest Trends' mission is to conserve forests and other ecosystems through the creation and wide adoption of a broad range of environmental finance, markets and other payment and incentive mechanisms.
About This Cause
Beginning in 1996, a small group of leaders from forest industry, environmental groups, and other businesses, began to meet to consider the array of challenges facing forest conservation and to find common ground. This group recognized the respective contributions and limits of their own institutions and decided to create a new organization - Forest Trends - to expand this work of bridging traditional divides and promoting market-based approaches to forest conservation. Forests and other ecosystems help provide clean air, clean water, habitats for biodiversity and a stable climate – services that are critical to a functioning planet. However, these environmental services have been externalized, with little or no recognized economic value, and therefore over-exploited. Currently, the global economic and regulatory models support unsustainable development and allow for the continued loss and degradation of forests and other key ecosystems. Traditional conservation approaches (such as protected areas) are inadequate to meet the larger task of maintaining the critical ecological balance of the planet; the sum of funds from public agencies and philanthropy is just a fraction of the investment needed, and the environment remains an issue separate from global development, trade and finance planning. Many of the traditional stewards of these globally important ecosystems (indigenous peoples, local communities) receive little or no benefit or economic support for their stewardship. At the same time, communities that live around the natural areas that are converted for agricultural or infrastructure development are hit the hardest economically and must cope with the associated losses. Whether it's fishers downstream of unregulated farms whose runoff have caused “dead zones,” or communities that must buy sand every year to replenish beaches lost to sea level rise caused by climate change, this externalization of environmental costs creates problems with real economic consequences, not to mention negative health impacts. Forest Trends works to create a new global economic system in which services provided by natural ecosystems are valued, and this value is mainstreamed into the way society approaches development, trade and investment. This shift towards more sustainable environmental management is sparked by market-based mechanisms that enable the global economy to appropriately create value for, then put a price on, these environmental services. These market-based mechanisms generate finance for sustainable management and the long-term conservation of ecosystem services as well as new business activities that produce conservation outcomes. Indigenous and other local communities also benefit from these environmental markets, thereby sustaining their livelihoods through the conservation of forests and other ecosystems. Forest Trends works build and enhance the economic value of environmental services, global conservation, and sustainable management efforts, through the creation and implementation of markets and mechanisms for Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES). PES, simply defined, is the practice of offering payments or incentives to landowners in exchange for managing their natural resources to provide an ecological service (e.g., carbon sequestration, water filtration, flood control). Forest Trends seeks to scale its model through broad policy and market uptake, which it facilitates by demonstrating successful conservation financing models, providing transparent information on ecosystem markets, and building support through a global network of diverse and strategic stakeholders (e.g. local communities, indigenous peoples, businesses, financial institutions, conservation and development groups, and government. Forest Trends is credited as a leader in the creation and promotion of PES models—which include public and private payments, cap and trade systems, certification programs, etc.—with the goal of generating a new wave of investment into nature conservation from the private sector and capital markets. agencies). Forest Trends’ strategies span from: tracking and providing market insights into trends and trade of various PES markets, including REDD-committed funds; tracking companies that have made commitments to reduce their impacts in the four main agricultural drivers of deforestation; reporting on illegal logging tracking, legislation, and enforcement; promoting community land tenure rights; integrating natural resource management into peace-building in post-conflict areas; developing innovative water infrastructure approaches; carrying out pilot demonstrations in the realms of marine PES, no-net-loss of biodiversity, and other “incubator” programs; and developing new finance mechanisms to bridge gaps between conservation opportunities and on-the-ground implementation…. and weaving these complex strands into the overall scope of creating a holistic new economic model for finance and markets, with emerging environmental markets as a driver for conservation, sustainable economic development, and climate change mitigation.