Ecosystem services

   The Conservation Catalysts Network (CCN) focuses on universities, colleges and research institutions that are catalyzing large landscape conservation. Our members are pairings of academic and research institutions with conservation initiatives (for example, the pairing of the Harvard Forest and the Wildlands and Woodlands Initiative).

Costa Rica is the first country in the world to receive an approval from the World Bank for a Carbon Fund, which will allow the country to have access to $63 million for the Payment Program for Environmental Services (PSA, in Spanish), which will come from the sale of 12 million tons of carbon capture by the country’s forests, a process known as carbon offset.

Project creates jobs, improves land, mitigates effects of climate change

Today marks the release of Ecosystem Marketplace's State of Watershed Payments 2012 report and with it some significant findings that include China leading the world in watershed investments and a US $2 billion increase on the protection of watersheds as a method to ensure safe water supplies as well as double the number of water initiatives being developed since 2008. 

While REDD+ is aimed at reducing emissions from forests, its effectiveness will depend on how much the benefits trickle down to those living closest to the forest. These same rural households are also best placed to provide local evidence of what works and what doesn’t, to influence decisions on REDD+ architecture at the national and international level. 

Chandler Clay, 202-572-3312, cclay@edf.org

In the Tigray Region of Ethiopia, severe land degradation, population growth and immigration, and unsustainable agricultural practices and management have undermined food security and rural livelihoods. Increased and recurrent drought and unpredictable and variable rainfall since the 1970s have exacerbated these problems. Climate change is multiplying the threats.

Brazilian policymakers can take some of the credit for a dramatic slowdown in the deforestation rate in the Brazilian Amazon, say experts – but that’s not the whole story. In November Brazil announced