E-Course - Introduction to Global Environmental Facility (GEF)

This e-course is offered by the Global Environment Facility (GEF). It provides an overview of the GEF, a unique international organization that is dedicated to safeguarding the global environment. By completing this e-course, you will gain knowledge of the GEF’s mission, history and institutional structure. You will understand the organizing principles and areas of work in the 7th GEF replenishment period (GEF-7). You will also learn about key cross cutting issues; the basics of GEF funding and its operational policies, as well as the results framework for GEF-7. It is a joint production by the GEF Secretariat’s Knowledge & Learning Team and the Open Learning Campus (OLC) of the World Bank Group and is hosted by the OLC. This e-course is also a part of the GEF Academy curriculum that is available on the GEF website.

Target Audience: GEF partners and stakeholders who work on GEF relevant project development and implementation – decision makers, managers and staff working on global environmental issues.  
 

Register Here

This course is free. For more information, please contact Yasemin E.K. Biro at ybiro@thegef.org

Biodiversity Finance Online Open Course

Do you need to make a stronger business case for biodiversity conservation? Do you want to become more skilled at developing financially sound and politically feasible solutions to conservation and development challenges? Do you need to know how to develop an effective biodiversity finance plan? Do you want access to more tools to assess the policy, institutional, and economic context for biodiversity finance, and to conduct a financial needs assessment to achieve a country’s biodiversity goals? 

BIOFIN is offering a FREE seven-week Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) called Biodiversity Finance. It will be facilitated in English, French, Spanish and Russian, and will run from 15 April to 31 May 2019. The course is aimed at conservation planning and biodiversity finance practitioners and policymakers, but is open to everyone.

View the full invitation here, or click here to register.

CTIS Webinar Recap

Katy Mathias, manager of the Conservation Trust Investment Survey (CTIS) Project and co-author, with Ray Victurine, of the CTIS annual report, conducted two webinars for CFA members on December 18 to share results of the CTIS report for Calendar Year 2017. The presentations were held 12 hours apart to accommodate a range of time zones. A webinar audio recording and Powerpoint slides, as well as a link to the 2017 report, are available on the CFA website.

The webinar highlighted key findings from the most recent study. The participants' organizational and endowment nominal investment returns for calendar year 2017 were higher than those from 2016, while sinking fund returns were slightly below 2016. In general, however, CTF returns were lower than might be expected given global investment performance in 2017. This may be attributed to, on average, the CTFs' tendency to under-allocate equity, relative to fixed income and cash.

Upcoming Webinar – The Nature Trust Alliance: Collaboration and shared services for Conservation Trust Funds

CFA is pleased to host a webinar in partnership with the Nature Trust Alliance (NTA) on November 30th, 2018. The session will address the origin of the Nature Trust Alliance as well as the current structure, challenges, and benefits.  Presenters will include NTA Director Alba Carreras and Geof Giacomini - Executive Director of Caucases Nature Fund (CNF). 
 
The Nature Trust Alliance (NTA) is a unique collaboration between three conservation trust funds: the Caucasus Nature Fund, Prespa Ohrid Nature Trust (PONT) and the newly established Blue Action Fund. The NTA was established in 2016 in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, and provides operational support services (financial management, investment management, administration, communications, reporting, etc.) to these three funds, so the funds can focus on their core missions of employing innovative and sustainable financing mechanisms for nature conservation.

Pooled models for Conservation Trust Funds have been a long-term topic of discussion – the CFA conducted an analysis of the issue in 2014. The NTA is a unique implementation of a pooling approach and may serve as an example to other CTFs. We look forward to a rich discussion.
 
To learn more about NTA please join us for the webinar on November 30th, 2018 from 10-11am EDT.
 
An RSVP is required. GoTo Meeting call-in information will be sent out prior to the session.

BIOFIN Webinar - Privately Protected Areas: A finance solution for private sector engagement in conservation

This April 23rd, at 9:00am EST, BIOFIN will host a webinar discussing Privately Protected Areas as a solution for private sector engagement in conservation. Through attendance in this webinar, participants will be able to understand what a PPA is, how it leverages private sector investment into biodiversity conservation, in which contexts it can be implemented, and how to build a successful model of PPA.

A full description of the webinar is available here, and for registration please click the button below.

Call for Webinar Topics

Over the next few months we are aiming to host several webinar sessions presented by CFA members. If you have an idea you would like to present or a topic that you would like to see presented and discussed, please email our secretariat. 

The webinars can cover a range of conservation finance topics. For an idea of what a CFA webinar session will look like, please check out the webinars page on the website for a description and recordings of our last session with Lestari Capital.

BIOFIN Webinar - Private Lands Conservation Series, Part 1: Conservation easements, the USA case

Mon, Dec 4, 2017 - 9:00am EDT

BIOFIN is launching a series of webinars on private lands conservation that will feature examples such as conservation easements, customary and collective property conservation, and Private Protected Areas (PPAs). This first session will focus on conservation easements in the US. Conservation easements are legally binding agreements between private landowners and non-profit land trusts or government to protect conservation values of a property. The webinar speaker, Andrew Seidl, is a co-author of the study and a professor in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics at CSU as well as a Senior Technical Advisor for BIOFIN.

The Webinar will focus on the main lessons learnt from the mechanism's evolution and implementation in the US. The strengths, weaknesses and risks will be presented as well as relevant examples of implementation and the return on investment of such mechanism for the region of Colorado. 

Further information on the webinar is available here, and the link to register is here.

SCCM Webinar Uploaded to Website

Thank you to those of you who joined us for our first webinar with Lestari Capital on the 24th. It was an informative and exciting session, and we look forward to hosting more webinars in the future. 

For those of you who were unable to attend, we have uploaded a recording of the webinar, with both audio and video of the presentation, to the website. We have also included a download of the slides so feel free to visit the website and check out what we learned about the SCCM.

Webinar: An Introduction to Business Planning for Protected Areas

The NOAA National MPA Center, the EBM Tools Network co-coordinated by NatureServe and OCTO, and MPA News are pleased to announce that they will host a webinar on: An Introduction to Business Planning for Protected Areas with Andrew Rylance, Technical Advisor to the GOS-United Nations Development Programme - Global Environment Facility. 

Presenter: Andrew Rylance is the Technical Advisor to the Government of Seychelles-United Nations Development Programme-Global Environment Facility (GOS-UNDP-GEF) Protected Area Financing Project (2016-2021). 

Description: A workshop on business planning was recently held to support the financial future of protected areas in Seychelles. Outputs developed under this project have global application. This presentation will outline the importance of business planning for protected areas and how business plans can be used as tools to leverage financial support for conservation management. The presentation will also provide an introduction to the components of business plans and a database of protected area business plans where users can access over 45 examples of protected area business plans and guidelines. 

The presentation will be on Thursday Nov. 9, at 1 pm US EST/10 am US PST/6 pm UTC. 

Register at:  https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/5824376261725463298

Upcoming SCCM Webinar

CFA webinars return October 24th with a presentation on the Sustainable Commodities Compensation Mechanism by Lestari Capital. CFA member Michal Zrust will be presenting with an introduction by Sylvie Goyet, a member of our Executive Committee. The webinar will take place October 24th at 9am EDT (New York City).

For those of you who are planning to attend, more information on the webinar as well as the GoTo meeting information can be found on the website.

We look forward to hearing your thoughts on the SCCM and are excited to once again be hosting webinars!