GNF - Forest Investments as Financial Source for Biodiversity Protection
 

Forest Investments for Biodiversity Protection

 

Background

Forest funds and other investment products with a forestry connection are also popular. Investments are crisis-resilient as trees grow regardless of trends in economic and capital markets and the global demand for wood consistently increases. In contrast to this is the large deficit in financing needed to stop the globally continuing biodiversity loss. Increased investments in forest funds could counter this lack of financing. This does, however, require that the financed projects actually support biodiversity protection.

 

This requires that projects funded by forest funds indeed have to contribute to the protection of biodiversity and consider social aspects during their implementation. The variety  of projects and business models of various providers of forest funds however makes it difficult to comprehend the sustanability of local Investments.

Aims of the Project

The project of the GNF and its partner OroVerde, started in July of 2012, has as its goal the analysis of existing offers for their social and ecological sustainability. The joint study with the Rainforest Foundation will later be supplemented with an evaluation of financial assumptions and transparency of the offers. Initially, a market overview of the in Germany available forest investment will be created and criteria for their evaluation will be developed. Five offers will be looked at in depth through onsite viewing. In the case studies, value will be placed on a geographic and content related breadth. Besides three case studies in tropical forests, two additional studies located in the northern hemisphere, Eastern Europe and German were chosen. In a second step, the case studies were evaluated and summarized in an overview with collected information on other products. The project runs until July 2014 and is financed through funds from the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety (BMUB) and the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation (BfN).

Supported by:

 Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Nuclear Safety and Consumer Protection
 Federal Agency for Nature Conservation
 
 

Official Project Titel:

 

 

Project Duration:

 

Project Partner:

 

Supported by:

Forest Investments as a new Financial Source for Biodiversity Protection, Germany

 

July 2012 – June 2014

 

OroVerde - Tropical Forest Foundation

 

German Federal Agency for Nature Conservation (BfN), German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety (BMUB)