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Conservation Finance
Conservation finance is the practice of raising and managing capital to support land, water, and resource conservation. Conservation financing options vary by source from public, private, and nonprofit funders; by type from loans, to grants, to tax incentives, to market mechanisms; and by scale ranging from federal to state, national to local. Conservationists have traditionally relied upon private, philanthropic capital in the form of solicited donations, foundation grants, etc., and public, governmental funds in the form of tax incentives, ballot measures, bonding, agency appropriations, etc., to fund conservation projects and initiatives. Although governments and philanthropists provide a moderate amount of funds, conservationist believe there is a shortage in the capital required to preserve global ecosystems. On an annual basis, they estimate in 2018 that investors must allocate $300 to $400 billion to meet worldwide conservation needs. From this amount, funders only prov ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Conservation Movement
The conservation movement, also known as nature conservation, is a political, environmental, and social movement that seeks to manage and protect natural resources, including animal, fungus, and plant species as well as their habitat for the future. Conservationists are concerned with leaving the environment in a better state than the condition they found it in. Evidence-based conservation seeks to use high quality scientific evidence to make conservation efforts more effective. The early conservation movement evolved out of necessity to maintain natural resources such as fisheries, wildlife management, water, soil, as well as conservation and sustainable forestry. The contemporary conservation movement has broadened from the early movement's emphasis on use of sustainable yield of natural resources and preservation of wilderness areas to include preservation of biodiversity. Some say the conservation movement is part of the broader and more far-reaching environmental movem ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Foreign Aid
In international relations, aid (also known as international aid, overseas aid, foreign aid, economic aid or foreign assistance) is – from the perspective of governments – a voluntary transfer of resources from one country to another. Aid may serve one or more functions: it may be given as a signal of diplomatic approval, or to strengthen a military ally, to reward a government for behavior desired by the donor, to extend the donor's cultural influence, to provide infrastructure needed by the donor for resource extraction from the recipient country, or to gain other kinds of commercial access. Countries may provide aid for further diplomatic reasons. Humanitarian and altruistic purposes are often reasons for foreign assistance. Aid may be given by individuals, private organizations, or governments. Standards delimiting exactly the types of transfers considered "aid" vary from country to country. For example, the United States government discontinued the reporting of mi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
USAID
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is an independent agency of the U.S. federal government that is primarily responsible for administering civilian foreign aid and development assistance. With a budget of over $27 billion, USAID is one of the largest official aid agencies in the world and accounts for more than half of all U.S. foreign assistance—the highest in the world in absolute dollar terms. Congress passed the Foreign Assistance Act on September 4, 1961, which reorganized U.S. foreign assistance programs and mandated the creation of an agency to administer economic aid. USAID was subsequently established by the executive order of President John F. Kennedy, who sought to unite several existing foreign assistance organizations and programs under one agency. USAID became the first U.S. foreign assistance organization whose primary focus was long-term socioeconomic development. USAID's programs are authorized by Congress in the Foreign Assistanc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
World Bank Group
The World Bank Group (WBG) is a family of five international organizations that make leveraged loans to developing countries. It is the largest and best-known development bank in the world and an observer at the United Nations Development Group. The bank is headquartered in Washington, D.C. in the United States. It provided around $98.83 billion in loans and assistance to "developing" and transition countries in the 2021 fiscal year. The bank's stated mission is to achieve the twin goals of ending extreme poverty and building shared prosperity.The World Bank, Press release: "World Bank Group Commitments Rise Sharply in FY14 Amid Organizational Change"July 1 2014, http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2014/07/01/world-bank-group-commitments-rise-sharply-in-fy14-amid-organizational-change/ref> Total lending as of 2015 for the last 10 years through Development Policy Financing was approximately $117 billion. Its five organizations are the International Bank for Reconstruc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
International Finance Corporation
The International Finance Corporation (IFC) is an international financial institution that offers investment, advisory, and asset-management services to encourage private-sector development in less developed countries. The IFC is a member of the World Bank Group and is headquartered in Washington, D.C. in the United States. It was established in 1956, as the private-sector arm of the World Bank Group, to advance economic development by investing in for-profit and commercial projects for poverty reduction and promoting development. The IFC's stated aim is to create opportunities for people to escape poverty and achieve better living standards by mobilizing financial resources for private enterprise, promoting accessible and competitive markets, supporting businesses and other private-sector entities, and creating jobs and delivering necessary services to those who are poverty stricken or otherwise vulnerable. Since 2009, the IFC has focused on a set of development goals that it ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ecosystem Service
Ecosystem services are the many and varied benefits to humans provided by the natural environment and healthy ecosystems. Such ecosystems include, for example, agroecosystems, forest ecosystem, grassland ecosystems, and aquatic ecosystems. These ecosystems, functioning in healthy relationships, offer such things as natural pollination of crops, clean air, extreme weather mitigation, and human mental and physical well-being. Collectively, these benefits are becoming known as ecosystem services, and are often integral to the provision of food, the provisioning of clean drinking water, the decomposition of wastes, and the resilience and productivity of food ecosystems. While scientists and environmentalists have discussed ecosystem services implicitly for decades, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) in the early 2000s popularized this concept. There, ecosystem services are grouped into four broad categories: ''provisioning'', such as the production of food and water; ''regul ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Payment For Ecosystem Services
Payments for ecosystem services (PES), also known as payments for environmental services (or benefits), are incentives offered to farmers or landowners in exchange for managing their land to provide some sort of ecological service. They have been defined as "a transparent system for the additional provision of environmental services through conditional payments to voluntary providers". These programmes promote the conservation of natural resources in the marketplace. Ecosystem services have no standardized definition but might broadly be called "the benefits of nature to households, communities, and economies" or, more simply, "the good things nature does". Twenty-four specific ecosystem services were identified and assessed by the ''Millennium Ecosystem Assessment'', a 2005 UN-sponsored report designed to assess the state of the world's ecosystems. The report defined the broad categories of ecosystem services as food production (in the form of crops, livestock, capture fisheries, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Solar Bonds
Solar bonds are municipal revenue bonds issued to provide low-interest financing for lower-cost accelerated development of local renewable energy technologies such as solar power. History The first solar bond authority was drafted by Paul Douglas Fenn, creator of Community Choice Aggregation, and approved by San Francisco, California voters in 2001. Under "solar neighborhoods" approach, municipal governments would enter into multi-decade community-wide power purchase agreements with competitive suppliers and issue solar bonds, or "H Bonds", to finance the new supplier's rollout of local renewable energy and energy efficiency measures, offering municipal bond financing to residents and businesses, the debt for which would be repaid on monthly electric bills - an approach that has come to be called "on-bill financing." The City of San Francisco enshrined solar bonds in its Community Choice Aggregation program in 2004 when it adopted an ordinance combining the City's authority to pr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Community Choice Aggregation
Community Choice Aggregation (CCA), also known as Community Choice Energy, municipal aggregation, governmental aggregation, electricity aggregation, and community aggregation, is an alternative to the investor owned utility energy supply system in which local entities in the United States aggregate the buying power of individual customers within a defined jurisdiction in order to secure alternative energy supply contracts. The CCA chooses the power generation source on behalf of the consumers. By aggregating purchasing power, they are able to create large contracts with generators, something individual buyers may be unable to do. The main goals of CCAs have been to either lower costs for consumers or to allow consumers greater control of their energy mix, mainly by offering "greener" generation portfolios than local utilities. Eight states in the United States have enacted CCA enabling law. They are: Massachusetts, Ohio, California, Illinois, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, and V ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Payment For Ecosystem Services
Payments for ecosystem services (PES), also known as payments for environmental services (or benefits), are incentives offered to farmers or landowners in exchange for managing their land to provide some sort of ecological service. They have been defined as "a transparent system for the additional provision of environmental services through conditional payments to voluntary providers". These programmes promote the conservation of natural resources in the marketplace. Ecosystem services have no standardized definition but might broadly be called "the benefits of nature to households, communities, and economies" or, more simply, "the good things nature does". Twenty-four specific ecosystem services were identified and assessed by the ''Millennium Ecosystem Assessment'', a 2005 UN-sponsored report designed to assess the state of the world's ecosystems. The report defined the broad categories of ecosystem services as food production (in the form of crops, livestock, capture fisheries, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Public Bonds
A country's gross government debt (also called public debt, or sovereign debt) is the financial liabilities of the government sector. Changes in government debt over time reflect primarily borrowing due to past government deficits. A deficit occurs when a government's expenditures exceed revenues. Government debt may be owed to domestic residents, as well as to foreign residents. If owed to foreign residents, that quantity is included in the country's external debt. In 2020, the value of government debt worldwide was $87.4 US trillion, or 99% measured as a share of gross domestic product (GDP). Government debt accounted for almost 40% of all debt (which includes corporate and household debt), the highest share since the 1960s. The rise in government debt since 2007 is largely attributable to the global financial crisis of 2007–2008, and the COVID-19 pandemic. The ability of government to issue debt has been central to state formation and to state building. Public de ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Debt-for-Nature Swap
Debt-for-nature swaps are financial transactions in which a portion of a developing nation's foreign debt is forgiven in exchange for local investments in environmental conservation measures. History The debt-for-nature swaps concept was first given birth by Thomas Lovejoy of the World Wildlife Fund in 1987 as an opportunity to deal with the problems of developing-nation indebtedness and its consequent deleterious effect on the environment. In the wake of the Latin American debt crisis that resulted in steep reductions to the environmental conservation ability of highly indebted nations, Lovejoy suggested that ameliorating debt and promoting conservation could be done at the same time. Since the first swap occurred between Conservation International and Bolivia in 1987, many national governments and conservation organizations have engaged in debt-for-nature swaps. Most swaps occur in tropical countries, which contain many diverse species of flora and fauna. Also, countries that have ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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