The Nature Conservancy of California

The Nature Conservancy is the leading conservation organization working around the world to protect ecologically important lands and waters for nature and people. We address the most pressing conservation threats at the largest scale and have built a tremendous record of success since our founding in 1951:

- We've protected more that 119 million acres of land and thousands of miles of rivers worldwide, and we operate more than 100 marine conservation projects globally;

- We are impacting conservation in 69 countries, protecting habitats from grasslands to coral reefs, from Australia to Alaska to Zambia;

- We address threats to conservation involving climate change, fresh water, oceans, and lands.

Working with partners - including indigenous communities, governments, and businesses - the Conservancy pursues solutions that protect and restore nature systems, use nature sustainable, and broaden support for conservation.

We are putting innovation to work for nature and scaling up good ideas to drive the conservation of the lands and waters on which all life depends.

A great example of this is our work on securing fresh water. It started with a simple idea and a modest investment from one of our trustees. The idea was to create a fund to enable large urban water users, like water utilities and soda and beer bottlers, to invest in protecting and restoring grasslands, forests, and wetlands in the upper watershed that help clean and store water. The restoration would ensure a clean and stable supply of water downstream for less than the cost of building water filtration plants that would have been necessary without restoring natural systems.

It was such a good idea that, just a few years later, the Conservancy is now helping create 60 water funds across four continents. A recent study published by Conservancy scientists shows that water funds are a solution that makes sense for more than 300 cities around the world.

Another example of the groundbreaking work in which the Conservancy engages is the historic debt swap in the Seychelles aimed at ocean conservation and climate mitigation programs. On February 29, 2016, the Conservancy and the Seychelles government closed a first-of-its-kind $27.3 million debt swap that will enable the creation of 400,000 square kilometers of new marine protected areas, increasing marine protection from 0.4% to 30% of the Seychelles' Exclusive Economic Zone. Half of this area will be in no-take zones to protect fish breeding sites and the most critical habitat.

Following the announcement of the Seychelles' debt swap at the COP 21 meetings in Paris, several other island nations (Grenada, Jamaica, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, and Palau) announced their intentions to replicate this model across additional priority marine habitats around the world. The Conservancy is currently working with these countries, as well as St. Kitts and Nevis, and hopes to conclude deals for Palau and Grenada by the end of 2016.

The World Bank, European Investment Bank, and the Waitt Foundation all voiced their support for scaling up such debt swaps. Chris Knowles of the European Investment Bank, said, "I run a team of 25 people who pride themselves on being innovative financiers, but I sit before you today as a very humbled man. I have not seen anything quite as smart as this for a very long time."

This is how the Conservancy works: we use good science, innovative thinking, and on-the-ground experimentation to create solutions that work for nature and people. Because these solutions make good economic sense, we are able to inspire others to take them even further to solve problems on a global scale.

When we develop good ideas like water funds or debt for conservation swaps, we scale them up through an approach we call: Protect-Transform-Inspire.

Protect: We work with local partners and communities to develop and apply good ideas that prove out solutions to protect land, rivers, and oceans at an unprecedented scale.

Transform: We engage businesses and governments in these projects to figure out how we can incorporate these solutions into business practices and public policies that guide development, thereby ensuring the adoption of these solutions beyond the places where we work.

Inspire: By proving out good ideas that make sense - for communities, for businesses, for nature, and for people - we inspire action on a global scale, building on ever broader community of people who value nautre and creating thriving communities and more dynamic economies.