Early stage development of a funding model to scale up the Nature Fundi approach with a white paper currently in development.

Together with Rikolto and TIMAP, we are developing a grant-based fund-of-funds model for capitalisation of community eco-credit groups using the community eco-credit methodology. The project recently won funding from the REDDA fund and is in its early set-up phase.  TIMAP has 38,000 community-based trainers in its network which looks like a good channel for climate adaptation cash to people excluded from access to credit.

Greenfi.org developed the "community eco-credit" methodology, which was designed to increase participation in activities that protect and restore ecosystems, like soil conservation or mangrove planting. Along the way, the approach also helps users build community-level financial assets and management experience. Piloted on the ground in Tanzania and Kenya with local partners, Greenfi.org now houses and disseminates eco-credit knowledge and tools. The model is now used by five organisations, so beginning to show some early traction and hopefully hitting a bit more scale through Nature Fundi (above). It's not perfect; there are costs and trade-offs to using the tool, as well as benefits - but our partners believe they are seeing that the approach delivers on its objective of increasing participation in ecosystem protection. More information can be found here.

A simple open source digital tool for verifying and reporting on implementation of performance-based natural resource management projects. More information can be found here or log-in here. If you want to be at the table, and not on the menu, then running your own monitoring system is probably A Very Good Idea. 

CSLP, or the climate-smart lending platform, is an effort to help agri lenders include sustainability requirements in agri-loan terms . You can read about it here. Backed by the Global Innovation Lab for Climate Finance, and endorsed by leading donors and funds, it is currently implementing with Rikolto, CRDB (Tanzania's largest agri-lender) and the Tanzanian Agricultural Research Institute. The approach points to something interesting, but will mainly be helpful for lenders serving larger farmers and doesn't reach the really small-scale producers who are most vulnerable to environmental change. 

A smallholder agri-lending pilot which included sustainability requirements into loan terms. F3 Life smashed a KIVA fund-raising record, won the UN/Morgan Stanley prize for climate change finance innovation and a SwissRe Resource prize amongst others, but ultimately died a death  as institutional funders (probably rightly) did not want to fund a new independent farmer lender, despite our nifty green USP and solution to the willingness-to-pay problem. Because, well, who needs another high risk, low margin agri-lender right now (2016 or so)? The IP and know-how developed through this project was rolled into Greenfi.org and the Climate-Smart Lending Platform.

Back in the glory days of carbon offset hype cycle 1.0 (c. 2005-2010), this pilot project financed fuel efficient cookstoves for schools and sold offsets created through fuel savings. The learning was that fuel savings resulted in cost savings, and those savings were spent on other things, which also had a carbon footprint. Also, just because the schools weren't buying fuel wood, it didn't mean that the wood went unused. So this project folded, a victim of shifting demand and supply curves. The immediate lesson was: Economic Reality: 1, Good Intentions: 0. The longer term lesson was that there might be specific circumstances in which people and companies are willing to invest in nature - and we now know a bit more about what those circumstances are. 

Payments for ecosystem services is a well-known and popular approach to performance-based contracting for improved land-management. Back in 2006, I designed the Lake Naivasha PES project which grew to involve nearly 20 commercial actors and over 4,000 smallholder farmers over 15 years. Initially operated by CARE International and later WWF, it is now operated by local water resource users associations. However, with 200,000 farmers in the Naivasha catchment, this project was ultimately constrained by insufficient willingness-to-pay. With CARE and ICRAF, I wrote a PES how-to guide for the Katoomba Group, then part of Forest Trends, and several PES template contracts and drafting notes. Please get in touch if you would like them. A key lesson from this project, beyond the perennial willingness-to-pay problem, was that real dialogue and negotiation, thinking through and working out project structures and a spirit of cooperation with participating farmers were just as important as the financial incentives.