Accelerating investment in bio-cultural resilience

Our way of using a transformed capital market to enhance biodiversity and cultural diversity

The Leadership TeamPeople & Planet Holdings is a new kind of private

investment fund with Good Capital to invest in food, forests and energy enhancing resilience of bio-cultural landscapes

SoCap – Social Capital Markets - annually convenes 1000’s of investors, donors and entrepreneurs building a market for good with a 2013 conference track for Ocean Health and long-term interest in attracting investment to biocultural resilience

Swedish National Biosphere Coordinator and the Lake Vanern Biosphere Reserve to serve as a pilot location building on their Biosphere Business Innovation System

Stockholm Resilience Centre wants to avail their 120 affiliated scientists offering highly relevant expertise in systems thinking, metrics & indicators

Why it mattersThe world’s great places with high conservation and cultural value are being eroded by extractive business practices

Traditional business measures success by market share, profit & growth while risks & opportunities of environmental & social ‘externalities’ remain poorly understood with the commons bearing their cost

A rapidly growing number of businesses & investors are ‘sympathetic’ to holistic approaches to people & planet, yet lack data to support ‘the business case’

What is Biocultural Resilience Investing Biocultural diversity is the inextricable link between

biological diversity and cultural diversity. It began receiving international recognition through the Declaration of Belem. (1988)

Resilience is the capacity to use shocks and disturbances like a financial crisis or climate change to spur renewal and innovative thinking. Resilience thinking embraces learning, diversity and above all, the belief that humans & nature are strongly coupled to the point that they should be conceived of as one social-ecological system. (Stockholm Resilience Centre)

Investing in Biocultural Resilience seeks a financial return on investment by leveraging & strengthening cultural practices & traditional ecological knowledge that expand both human and environmental well-being. (People and Planet, 2012) 

Why we need the tool

Investors rarely understand the interdependencies of success

• Inadequate information inhibits understanding of risks and opportunities that would be afforded through a holistic approach to natural resource management

Social Purpose Companies better achieve their goals with tools to manage ‘environmental & social governance’ & communicate impact

Financial success of holistic projects like Playa Viva, a boutique eco-hotel, in Guerrero, Mexico depends on:

• restoring mangroves for turtle habitat, and • livelihoods for local people selling organic sea salt that is only economically viable due to the restored mangroves

The need: Evidence & stories demonstrating clear long-term investment value

Examples of companies building

resilience for people & nature

Rainforest product company example

WHAT: Economic incentives for forest conservation from converting Guyuasa wild harvest herbs to agroforestry in the Ecuadoran Amazon for beverages

HOW: $1M+ sales, fair trade organic

100% annual growth

4 years operating experience

International non-profit

WHO: Blue Ventures is a UK non-profit social enterprise, $1.5M annual revenue, 30% annual growth

WHAT: innovate marine conservation with ecotourism, fisheries management, aquaculture and blue carbon in Madagascar and now also Belize, Fiji & Mauritius

Conservation Impact: established & replicating largest community-managed marine reserve in Indian Ocean

Social Impact: rural poor adopting new sustainable livelihoods: sea cucumbers, tourism

 

The power of well-delivered

dataMicrofinance has grown into a multi-billion dollar asset class extending financial services to the world’s poor because sufficient data was made available to investors to unfold a new way to understand risk and opportunity

Well communicated data, science & stories will unleash pent up demand to accelerate investment and business practices that further resilience in biocultural landscapes

Standardize measures of success

U.S. National Research Council Committee on Criteria and Procedures for Evaluating Programs to Conserve Biological Diversity

Accelerating standards to guide success for people and planet

Data Collectio

n

Ratings

Analytics

Scorecard to build from to build & guide

resilience

Without the toolHolistic, multi -stakeholder deals do not happen or only happens when a genius translator puts them together, speaking environmental restoration, resilience science on the one hand, & talking social investment like a small holder agricultural loan officer on the other

What is the tool’s key innovation?

The Bio-cultural Resilience Tool will be a Rosetta Stone linking environmentally focused funders with socially focused funders into better, more complete deals than either could do on their own. It will validate a new holistic bio-regionally focused investment category.

Such a holistic management tool for complex, systemic approaches to change, to track progress and evaluate impact across those two spectrums, does not exist.

What rules will apply?

Add more value than you extract

Share risk and return amongst investors, entrepreneurs and communities

Involve communities in design, governance and ownership of enterprises (Morgan Simon, Toniic)

Many add-on applications for protected area managers,

students & startups

Ecommerce platform for remote artisans to access markets

Bioregions can become a magnet for the smartest bio-cultural resilience focused entrepreneurs while providing basis for information exchange

Students & practitioners can contribute research and results to this open source tool that could lead to jobs, startups and careers with meaning that call on their best skills

Criteria for Choosing Pilot Sites

Conservation areas with established collaborative natural resource governance inclusive of local social and cultural groups

Robust existing environmental data collection

An array of existing SME commercial activities that preferably include international trade

Reserves that include oceans and coastal zones

We favor areas associated with Biosphere Reserves & World Heritage Sites, national parks, and other reserves where there is existing interest of donors, investors and government

Candidate Locations for Pilot

Lake Vänern Biosphere Reserve & Ramsar Site is the largest lake in Sweden and the third largest lake in Europe. With almost 60,000 people including indigenous people living in the biosphere reserve, it offers great cultural and economic value. Value added fishery products abound in a formerly dirty lake.

Sian Ka’an Biosphere Reserve & World Heritage Site covers 5,280 km² and eight land and marine protected natural areas in Quintana Roo, Mexico.

Gulf of California and the Vizcaino Biosphere Reserve off Baja California noted for its mega marine diversity.

Playa Viva, Guerrero, Mexico is a hotel and private reserve with 30 km of shoreline, nestled between the Sierra Madres and Pacific Ocean and two estuaries. Sand beaches give rise to majestic dunes, which flatten into lush wetlands and palm groves and then rise to hills that are part of an archeological site that once formed the village of Xolochiuhyan.

What’s the current status?1. Core team established, refining strategy, partners and funding

• Shaun Paul, People & Planet Holdings• Kevin Jones, Social Capital Markets (SoCap)• Per Olson, Stockholm Resilience Centre• Johanna MacTaggart, Swedish Biosphere Coordinator & Lake Vanern Biosphere Manager

2. Expression of interest to form a technical Working Group

• Government: US National Park Service, NOAA, George Wright Society

• Intl Orgs: UNESCO-MAB, World Commission on Protected Areas, GEF, IUCN

• Academia: Tufts University, Monterrey Institute, Colorado State University

3. Considering how to best incorporate extensive expressions of interest

• Investors: People & Planet will catalyze investor applications, Blue Oceans Impact Fund interested

• Companies: Farmline IT for fisherfolk, Play Viva eco-resort and Alter-Eco natural foods company

• Protected area managers and Business accelerators

4. Considering home for the tool that assures open access and strategic dissemination

5. Finalizing plan & proposal to assure financing and in-kind support from diverse sources

What is this tool again?

It’s a holistic management tool that will transform the capital markets while it enhances biodiversity and cultural diversity, including the position of the marginalized

Thank youShaun Paul, People & Planet Holdings shaun@shaunpaul.org

Kevin Jones, Social Capital Marketskevindoylejones1@gmail.com

Per Olson, Stockholm Resilience Centreper.olsson@stockholmresilience.su.se

Johanna MacTaggart, Lake Vänern Biosphere Reserve johanna.mactaggart@vanerkulle.se