Finding ways to channel and coordinate investment to support sustainable landscape management
With the world’s population increasing, and the availability of natural resources dwindling, there’s a stark discrepancy in supply and demand for resources that fulfill basic human needs. By 2050, it is estimated that a population of 9 billion people will inhabit the planet, with much of that increase in population concentrated in the developing world. Meanwhile, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) challenge the world with not only supporting, but also improving, the welfare of more people.
Agricultural production must be increased, without damaging the integrity of natural resources. New models of investment and finance are needed to incentivize sustainable agriculture and land management in a way that supports the multiple, interrelated SDGs.
Our research helps to develop new models of finance and investment that improve livelihoods, ecosystems and communities. We study existing experiences of financial actors and integrated landscape initiatives as they work collaboratively to scale up financing for ILM.
From this analysis we provide recommendations to financiers, businesses, government officials, community leaders and donors. We also work with actors on the ground to create innovative strategies for attracting and coordinating financing for ILM.
We are working together with leaders in the green finance community to identify, describe, disseminate, analyze and innovate on existing models of integrated landscape investment. Learn more about how we’re doing this work through a partnership with IUCN Netherlands and collaboration with the Coalition for Private Investment in Conservation in this factsheet on the new CPIC Landscape and Seascape Finance Working Group.
We guide leaders in agribusiness, policy and finance through processes to coordinate finance at the landscape level. Our research provides frameworks for how to engage a diverse group of stakeholders and incentivize a wide array of outcomes within a landscape. We develop and pilot tools, like the Landscape Investment and Finance Toolkit (LIFT), that help both landscape leaders and investors make the right deal at the right time.
We generate understanding of the human, natural and financial factors involved in specific landscapes. Place-based studies assist landscape leaders, agribusinesses, policy makers and financiers to structure investment funds with returns for communities, businesses and investors.
We analyze barriers and opportunities for incentivizing landscape-based approaches to development. Our country-wide analyses offer tailored direction in how best to coordinate finance, and attract investment, to advance development goals through the landscape approach.
We train landscape and finance leaders to collaboratively develop the creative solutions to finance challenges that thriving landscapes need through innovative in-person and online courses and workshops.
Our research provides a framework for businesses, farmers, governments, financiers, project developers and landscape leaders to think about how financing and investment can be coordinated in a way that transforms landscapes and achieves the interrelated Sustainable Development Goals.
Threats tied to climatic variability, institutional weaknesses and social issues need to be reduced to attract investment. To reduce loss through unproductive competition, investors must work in partnership with other entities and identify entry points for supporting landscape initiatives. Our work facilitates communication between financiers and land managers, and supports them to think about how financing and investment can best be structured to achieve the diverse goals within a landscape.
To achieve the SDGs, new models of investment and finance are needed that not only incentivize the scaling up of investment in sustainable agriculture and land management, but do so in strategic ways that contribute to the inter-related goals and effectively manage the competition and interdependencies for natural resources and ecosystem services among the Goals and among land users. This paper analyzes a number of those new models, and proposes actions that can be taken to improve the financial picture for sustainable development. Ahora disponible en español.
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Bridge the gap between finance and landscape! Learn to navigate the web of landscape financial flows, mechanisms and requirements toward developing cutting-edge business cases and models for sustainable development in landscapes in this approximately 8-hour self-paced online course.
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Looking for help finding funding for your landscape action plan? Get a Lift.
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