11 September 2017 | After Hurricane Sandy decimated Hoboken, NJ, the city started restoring marshes and turning vacant land into a “resiliency park” that will mop up at least one million gallons of floodwater. In so doing, it became part of a $25 billion “restoration economy” that directly employs 126,000 people and supports 95,000 other jobs – mostly in […]
Since it was founded, Forest Trends’ mission has been to put markets and finance to work for conservation, rather than at its expense. As carbon-absorbing ecosystems like forests become more and more instrumental in the fight against climate change, Forest Trends has set out to promote market-based incentives that give value to the climate benefits […]
<<Initiative Home << All Initiatives Click through the countries below to learn about our activities, partnerships, and results in Peru, Bolivia, Mexico, China, Ghana, Brazil, Costa Rica, and Ethiopia. Peru Peru Incubator Project Partner: Peruvian Ministry of Environment (MINAM), Peruvian National Superintendent of Water and Santiation Services (SUNASS), Ecodecisión, Consorcio para el Desarrollo Sostenible de […]
Hurricane Harvey reminded us just how vulnerable low-lying cities like Houston are in a climate-changed world – especially when we degrade the living ecosystems that regulate floods and absorb greenhouse gasses. Fortunately, we have plenty of tools we can use to develop the “green infrastructure” needed to help us navigate the new reality of life in the Anthropocene.
Pioneering innovative approaches to water management is one thing. Making sure those approaches have a lasting impact is another. It requires the backing of a regulatory framework with legislation in place to ensure that successful prototypes can become the norm going forward. Therefore, in promoting a new approach that combines “green” and “gray” solutions, Forest […]
To deliver real water benefits, along with economic and environmental “co-benefits,” green infrastructure needs to be integrated on a meaningful scale – and thus financed on a meaningful scale. That might seem simple, but in reality it requires a radical paradigm shift in the way our public and private institutions think about infrastructure – and […]
From San Francisco to Sao Paulo, we see evidence of the global water crisis in decade-long droughts, devastating floods, and out-of-control wildfires. Climate change is amplifying these threats while continued population growth puts greater demands on our water systems. As a result, water users, governments, and businesses around the world are increasingly recognizing the critical […]
These days, everything from coffee to cornflakes has somebody’s stamp of approval, letting you know its ingredients have been sustainably harvested or that its producers have been treated fairly. But what do these standards mean? Here’s a quick look at four (soon to be three) of the most popular.
Marks & Spencer has been recognized as one of the most sustainable retailers on the planet, second only to Finland’s much smaller Kesko OYJ, but the company – and other sustainable enterprises like Unilever and Tesco – are tiny drops in the ocean of our modern and still unsustainable economy. Can their joint efforts improve the global ecosystem in which they operate?
Improving the sustainability of agriculture requires transforming financial incentives for farmers and landowners, including scaling up overall flows of finance toward improved productivity and land conservation. Traditional financial systems fail to factor in the environmental costs of agriculture, making sustainable practices more expensive in comparison to industrial agriculture. But that is slowly changing, thanks to […]