[Pollinator] New Report Highlights Successes in USDA-Funded Conservation Finance Projects

Sat Apr 24 08:12:59 PDT 2021

>From USDA:

*New Report Highlights Successes in USDA-Funded Conservation Finance
Projects*

https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/wps/portal/nrcs/detail/national/programs/financial/cig/?cid=nrcseprd1764631

In 2015, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources
Conservation Service (NRCS) launched a new initiative to fund promising
conservation finance projects through its Conservation Innovation Grants
(CIG) program. This innovative effort was spurred by the belief that
attracting additional private sector funding to private and working lands
conservation could increase the pace and scale of conservation adoption by
farmers, ranchers and private forest landowners.

NRCS funded a diverse cohort of conservation finance projects, ranging from
consumer-driven certification and labeling programs to urban green
infrastructure to pay-for-success approaches for water quality
improvements. A new report published by the Conservation Finance Network
and Gordian Knot Strategies highlights the value of these initiatives. The
report finds that overall, of the 25 CIG-funded conservation finance
projects funded by NRCS between 2015-2017:

   - 16 (64%) achieved on-the-ground conservation outcomes;
   - 8 (32%) successfully sourced and deployed private investment capital;
   and,
   - 17 (68%) led to follow-on projects, post-CIG award.

The Enduring Arches: Building Conservation Finance Projects for Impact
report <https://gordianknotstrategies.com/enduring-arches/> [image: offsite
link image]    , funded by the Walton Family Foundation, lays out a
framework that can guide how and where future conservation dollars are
spent.

“We hope that this report and the Arch Framework serve as something akin to
a credit rating score for conservation projects,” says Sean Penrith, CEO of
Gordian Knot Strategies and lead author of the new report. “Conservation
finance dollars are too rare to waste, so finding a way to optimize their
use is critical.”

*Conservation Finance in Practice*

At first glance, it can be difficult to find common ground between all the
conservation finance projects that were funded by CIG since they cover the
entire range of natural resource concerns, from water and air quality to
wildlife habitat and carbon sequestration to consumer product labeling. Yet
all the projects share the common goal of attempting to pinpoint both the
value of a natural resource or ecosystem service and finding willing payers
for that service. The resulting increased flow of money to conservation
projects creates wins for America’s farmers and ranchers, investors and the
environment.

For example, several CIG-funded projects are attempting to help farmers
transition to organic agriculture. Organic production systems can lead to
higher margins for farm operators and increased environmental benefits,
including cleaner water for downstream users and increased carbon
sequestered in the soil. But the cost of transitioning can be costly and
risky, with producers having to go through a three-year transition period
during which many incur additional costs. Consequently, several CIG-funded
conservation finance projects are aiming to address this challenge. Two
projects, a 2016 CIG lead by Iroquois Valley
<https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/wps/portal/nrcs/detail/national/programs/financial/cig/?cid=nrcseprd1744436>
and
a 2019 CIG lead by Mad Agriculture, have successfully piloted loan
structures that help farmers transition to organic while securing returns
for impact investors. “We are being taken seriously by the large bankers on
Wall Street and multinational companies that trade in the commodities that
farmers are growing,” explains Brandon Welch, Director of Radical Capital
for Mad Agriculture. “This is going to change the future of farm financing.”

Similarly, a CIG-funded project lead by the Xerces Society
<https://beebettercertified.org/> [image: offsite link image]     established
a new labeling program for farm products, certifying the product as
pollinator friendly. The idea behind the Bee Better standard is that
consumers will be willing to pay a premium for products they know to be
environmentally friendly. This encourages participating farmers, like the
10,000-acre Villicus Farms in northern Montana, to adopt practices that
benefit pollinators, including habitat creation and pesticide mitigation.
The Bee Better standard has been adopted on almost 20,000 farm acres and is
being used by major retailers including Häagen-Dazs. The Xerces Society is
still expanding the program, with plans to enter new countries (such as
Canada and South America) and crop verticals (such as blueberries and wine
grapes).

[image: The Bee Better Certified seal indicates that certified ingredients
were grown in ways that support bees, butterflies, and other beneficial
insects.]    *The Bee Better Certified seal indicates that certified
ingredients were grown in ways that support bees, butterflies, and other
beneficial insects.*

Other CIG-funded conservation finance projects focused on water quality and
quantity issues. For example, a project lead by The Nature Conservancy and
the Fox Canyon Groundwater Management Agency used advanced metering
infrastructure to facilitate water trading in order to meet new groundwater
regulations. The project lead to a successful year-long groundwater market
pilot in 2020, with more than 100 agricultural wells opting to participate
and the first trades completed in March 2020. Still, other CIG-funded
projects analyzed by the report used market incentives to address issues
ranging from wildfire risk to land access for young farmers to storm water
management.

“The findings from the Enduring Arches: Building Conservation Finance
Projects for Impact reinforce what we had hoped when we embarked on this
new effort—that conservation finance can lead to on-the-ground conservation
outcomes,” says Kari Cohen, Projects Branch Chief at the NRCS. “The
framework highlighted by the report can help NRCS deploy our funding for
innovative conservation more effectively in the future.”

NRCS was created during the Dust Bowl era to help farmers recover and
maintain healthy and productive working landscapes. Over the subsequent
decades as conservation practices evolved in their complexity, so too has
the agency, providing billions annually in funding and technical assistance
to America’s farmers and ranchers. This newest turn to conservation finance
is a continuation of the NRCS’ original mandate: finding the most effective
ways to assist both conservation and production on private lands in America.

----------

Matthew Shepherd

Director of Communications & Outreach

*he/him/his*

Cell: (503) 807-1577

matthew.shepherd at xerces.org

[image: Email-Outlook_Xerces-logo-CMYK]

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