Forest Trends

With a small, international team of experts, Forest Trends promotes the creation and wide adoption of environmental finance, markets, and other incentive mechanisms to conserve ecosystems. Forest Trends helps coordinate the Climate and Land Use Coalition, a network of civil society organizations that fosters land and climate policy with ecological integrity through a variety of policy and science fora. With this coalition, Forest Trends is bringing together the best scientific and policy information about the role of intact forests in mitigating and adapting to climate change; identifying gaps in existing carbon accounting frameworks related to intact forests; providing technical assistance to help key countries include their intact forests in their climate strategies; and engaging and informing the guidance process with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the Green Climate Fund, the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility, and the Global Climate Action Agenda to advance the recognition and understanding of the vital role that intact forests play.

Forest Trends will bring the states and provinces represented in the Governors’ Climate & Forests (GCF) Task Force, companies represented in the Consumer Goods Forum, and forest / indigenous communities managing large areas of tropical forests together in agreement on how to work together to scale up forest carbon solutions in Latin America.

Forest Trends works to conserve forests by recognizing the market value of the ecosystem services they provide to humankind. These include carbon storage and sequestration, habitat for biodiversity, and water protection. In partnership with policy-makers, businesses, communities, and investors they are building financial tools and policies to make economic markets work for conservation and sustainability. This award provides institutional support to Forest Trends to establish an operating reserve for the institution and for consultant costs to improve fundraising, communications, and strategic planning.

Forest Trends works globally to expand understanding of the benefits that ecosystems provide to people and to promote the use of innovative instruments for conservation. The project will build on the Peruvian Incentives for Watershed Services Incubator and strengthen and expand local efforts to establish ecosystem service projects that are designed around water flow. Secondly it will assist Peru in defining national guidelines for an Environmental Compensation Regulation on impacts from infrastructure and extractive industry projects and assist San Martin Department environmental authorities to implement this new regulatory instrument in the mining, energy and hydropower sectors.

To expand innovative approaches to market-based conservation (over three years).