As concerns over climate change and natural resource depletion grow, investors have begun seeking opportunities for generating both market-rate financial returns and quantifiable environmental gains. Investing with the objectives of social or environmental return is often referred to as impact investing. Measuring and reporting the environmental impact of such investing is becoming of greater interest to environmental managers and investors. This report presents findings from interviews of investment fund managers of environmental real assets—defined here as real assets that rely on ecological systems to generate cash flows (e.g., timber, agriculture, fisheries, water rights)—and offers several recommendations.  

Coastal vegetated ecosystems have long benefited coastal communities and fisheries, and in recent years have been recognized internationally for their significant capacity to sequester and store carbon (“blue carbon”)—at rates that surpass those of tropical forests. Yet these ecosystems are being converted rapidly. Current annual mangrove deforestation has been estimated to emit 240 million tons of carbon dioxide. For this reason, financing mechanisms to pay those tropical countries that have significant blue carbon resources to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation have been explored as a means to fund mangrove conservation. This report by the United Nations Environment Programme, the Abidjan Convention Secretariat, and GRID-Arendal explores the potential of international carbon finance mechanisms to help fund mangrove conservation along the coast of West, Central, and Southern Africa that is covered by the Abidjan Convention and examines the scale of economic benefits that this conservation might provide for the region, including benefits not always recognized in traditional assessments or valuations. 

The 2015 East Coast Forum convened by the Fisheries Leadership & Sustainability Forum (Fisheries Forum) explored opportunities for federal fishery managers to support effective treatment of uncertainty and risk through risk-based management approaches and management strategy evaluation. The success of federal fishery management plans requires managers to communicate effectively about uncertainty and risk and to make decisions that perform well under conditions of uncertainty and environmental change. By understanding and accounting for limitations on the information that supports decision making, fishery managers can make decisions that are likely to meet management objectives and that reflect an explicit risk tolerance. The Fisheries Forum convenes a series of forums for council members, council staff, and NOAA Fisheries staff. Each forum focuses on a topic with regional and national relevance. The forums are a unique opportunity for managers to explore emerging issues and questions and to share ideas and information across management regions.

A new study in the journal Marine Policy examines, for the first time, the transparency of international fisheries management organisations operating on the high seas. Transparency is broadly recognized as an essential component of sustainable development and good governance, especially with regard to the management of natural resources. In order to develop a more secure investment environment and provide the public with knowledge of natural resource rents received by their governments, terrestrially-based standards such as the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative have been established to ensure greater fiscal transparency. The results that emerged from the study are mixed, highlighting a number of good and also weak practices. 

Formal governance structures and funds need to be put in place by 2020 to create networks of sea-floor reserves that maintain and restore biodiversity and functioning of deep-sea ecosystems, writes the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions Linwood Pendleton and colleagues in a comment piece in the journal Nature.

More than one million square kilometres of the sea below 200 metres in depth are being ploughed by trawlers, and the next decade will see expansion of oil, gas and mineral extraction into deeper waters. At risk are ecosystems that contain thousands of undiscovered organisms, that contribute to the health and productivity of the ocean, that challenge our ideas of the extremes at which life can exist, and that are habitat and nursery for fisheries. Some threatened species have lifespans of hundreds of thousands of years or live in habitats that take millennia to form. The 2015 U.N. General Assembly should develop a new body to protect deep sea biodiversity, or extend the mandate of the International Seabed Authority (ISA) beyond mining to protect the deep-sea from a wider range of regulated commercial industrial activities, the authors suggest. The ISA could then apply the Convention on Biological Diversity targets for protecting and restoring 10% of the oceans, including the deep sea, by 2020. This conservation activity would require around $30 million per annum, which could be raised by taxing extractions from the deep sea, Pendleton and his co-authors propose.

Fisheries Leadership & Sustainability Forum staff published a final summary of discussions from the East Coast Fisheries Forum, June 26-29 in Annapolis, Maryland. This meeting convened federal fishery managers, scientists and National Marine Fisheries Service leadership to explore habitat conservation as a strategy for supporting sustainable fisheries.

Summary of discussion themes and guide to additional resources from the 2012 East Coast Forum.

Summary of discussion themes and guide to additional resources from the 2011 West Coast Fisheries Forum.

This report was prepared for the 2011 West Coast Forum on coastal and marine spatial planning. The first part explores the originals and drivers of CMSP, and the potential role that the regional councils might play in a CMSP framework. The second part explores opportunities for Councils to utilize existing authorities and mechanisms to coordinate with other ocean users.

Summary of discussion themes and guide to additional resources from the 2011 East Coast Fisheries Forum.