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Funding and Finance / Feed

The number one problem in nature conservation is the need for more money or access to funding. This group aims to help all WILDLABS community members with funding and financing their projects. The group is called Funding and Finance to draw attention to the possibilities of funding (i.e., grants, awards, and other gifts)  and finance (loans and venture capital investment in nature conservation projects and start-ups). These topics should be seen in their wider contexts, including that of a project or organisation’s income or business model.

Group curators

discussion

Unlocking Hundreds of Billions Annually for Nature—at No Cost

Damian Estrada

10 February 2025 8:42pm

Hello Funding and Finance Group,As this community recognizes, sustainable funding remains one of the biggest challenges in nature conservation. The recent U.S. withdrawal from the...

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Damian Estrada

17 February 2025 5:00pm

Hi Jared,
Thank you so much for your feedback! I appreciate you taking the time to share your thoughts. My message needs refining so please let me try to elaborate for the group, and feel free to DM me if you want to discuss it further:

The challenge:
Philanthropic giving in the USA accounts for $500 billion/annually,  70% comes from everyday people, and only $3 billion goes to Nature Funding  The main barriers to giving for Americans are affordability (72%), transparency (65%), and ease of contribution (35%).  Thus, B Corp works on transparency, and 1% for the Planet makes it easy for people and merchants.  These solutions help but are half measures as philanthropy remains directly correlated to GDP with low single-digit growth despite 90% of Americans wanting to help the Planet.  

Mandatum solves the affordability issue for everyday people and merchants to contribute at no extra cost to themselves providing hundreds of billions of new funding annually.

We are in the early stages of development, building a strong foundation based on our initial Proof of Concept, and eager to learn and iterate based on expert feedback. We are open to exploring various models, such as nonprofit/for-profit/free/% fee, with the ultimate goal of maximizing our impact and accelerating the flow of funds toward critical causes.

I hope this group helps me to connect faster to the existing network of actors within the nature conservation community. Your expertise and insights will be invaluable in identifying key partnerships and exploring potential collaborations in the nature conservation landscape.

We are open to questions and discussions.

Thanks again.

Cheers!!!
 

Kim Hendrikse

18 February 2025 7:21am

Hi Damian, maybe I'm thick or something, but I still have no idea what you are offering. There are a lot of big numbers thrown around but I'm sure you are able to explain much more clearly what it is you are offering. Can you not just explain in really simple language what you do, where you get your cut from, what you sell, what someone has to do to get it and how it will benefit wildlife funding ? To me it feels like there's is some bad side to this that you are not wanting to talk about. My reaction to that is to run in the opposite direction. What works for me is transparency, I'm not seeing that here. And a tip, if you make something seem vague and untransparent then you tend to loose people forever  and rightly so I think.

Also you say you have been nominated for the 2025 Earthshot Prize (you have not won a prize), can you please provide a link to some site that is not your own that proves this ?

And todate, how much money has been giving to biodiversity causes through whatever this is and to whom ? A search shows a figure of 17,926 euros of donations from your workers to some charitys. But no evidence of any billions or even hundreds of thousands that I can find.

Here's an approach that I'm sure would work here. Donate a million euros and ask for grant applications for it. Keep it simple and transparent. You don't have to think in terms of billions, even a single one million would work wonders. Above all it would establish credibility. You would get a lot of praise and support if you did that from this crowd I think. What do you think? Keep it short term. Say applications close end of August or something.

Damian Estrada

18 February 2025 5:28pm

Hi Kim, 
Thank you so much for taking the time to share your thoughts. 


I understand your desire for concrete evidence, and that's precisely what we're working towards. Please remember that Mandatum is a nascent startup. We successfully completed a private beta and passed the Proof of Concept stage, demonstrating the viability of our core technology. Our focus at this stage is to refine our model and build strategic partnerships to navigate the nature conservation landscape.  
The Earthshot Prize nomination serves as validation of our innovative approach and its potential for significant impact, as we have successfully progressed through several stages of the rigorous evaluation process. 


Mandatum has the potential to unlock hundreds of billions of dollars annually for nature conservation, aligning perfectly with the goals of this Funding and Finance Group. I am hoping to get some guidance and support from this community to accelerate our development and bring this groundbreaking solution to fruition to resolve "the number one problem in nature conservation." 
 

I am eager to connect with individuals genuinely interested in exploring innovative solutions to the funding crisis in nature conservation. If you'd like to learn more about Mandatum and discuss the project in more detail, please DM me. I believe your expertise, or that of any member of the group, would be invaluable in guiding our project towards success.

Cheers!!!

 

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discussion

MargoTV - new wildlife tech youtube series and subsidized conservation products!

Jared Marley

9 January 2025 12:17am

Hi Wildlife Tech Community, I am excited to share our latest project at Margo Supplies! We’ve launched MargoTV, a video series on YouTube highlighting our work in wildlife...

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Kim Hendrikse

13 February 2025 7:43am

I'm looking forward to the cool Margo TV we are going to see when we get some AI bear monitoring going in Canada with Margo supplies :) That's going to be awesome.

Here is an image of a bear from last night in the Scandinavian zoo in Denmark. The system triggered on the bear even though it is very dark and this is a digital zoom on a wide angle fixed camera. Despite being very fuzzy we are able to get triggers on these ones due to the use of multiple mitigation techniques so we get long distance, high sensitivity and low false positives. This one for example was checked with multiple successive frames and multiple AI models before calling it a bear.

This is without thermal. But with added thermal and models trained on thermal images the heat signature will effectively be taken up in the model I'm expecting. This would mean that in effect you can tolerate a lower confidence level but it would after all be a living thing as well.

Polar bear

This trigger event for this event was even less clear, but you can still just make out two eyes, and bear in mind (excuse the pun), the actual view from this camera is even wider and the bear further away in a sense as this is a dynamic zoom.

Polar bear trigger

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Link

Funding Options for Environmental Projects: A Comprehensive Guide

Carly Batist

26 January 2025 6:39pm

"In this guide, we break down the different types of funding opportunities available for environmental projects, providing key insights into each option’s benefits, expectations, and processes."

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discussion

Mossy Earth Innovation grant

Yvan Satgé

16 January 2025 8:20pm

Hi all,this may be a bit on the fringes of the WildLabs conservation tech but Mossy Earth is opening an innovation grant supporting tests of novel ecological restoration methods...

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funding

RestorLife Awards ($25k)

Carly Batist

16 January 2025 6:17pm

 To celebrate and fund the work being done to protect and restore nature. 2 Awards - NGO award and Responsible Business Leadership Award

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article

Horizon scan of AI in nature conservation

Frank van der Most

18 December 2024 4:42pm

Comments on Reynolds, S.A et all (2024) 'The potential for AI to revolutionize conservation: a horizon scan'. A very interesting read, perhaps more for the discussion on negative effects of AI and consequences for the...

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Vance Russell

13 January 2025 12:56pm

Thank you for this excellent summary, Frank. I agree with you that not enough is being developed on the implementation side, which is what is needed most. Last year, I ...
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funding

Tech4Nature Award

Frank van der Most

26 November 2024 12:14am

This is an award for work done within categories of technological innovation in area-based conservation, tech use for red-listed species conservation, and the inclusion of indigenous peoples, local communities and...

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discussion

Conservation Finance: Towards a New Model for Landscape Restoration. New Book

Vance Russell

5 November 2024 7:54am

Hi Folks,Here's a sneak preview of our book Conservation Finance: confinance.info. Feedback and sharing are welcome.Best,Vance

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Frank van der Most

21 November 2024 3:45pm

This is an interesting read, Vance!

Perhaps first a disclaimer. Reading this book was my first serious dive/read/exploration of the topic of nature conservation finance.

One of the most enlightening parts is the circular diagram of the environmental impact bond ( fig. 1.1 in chapter 1 ) because it shows all the typical roles involved, their relations, and the flow of money/value.

For me the eye opener was that there can be many parties involved, which is completely different from the basic grant making model where there are only two parties. This makes the organization of such an instrument quite complicated, and the book mentions, more than once I believe, that this requires the capacity to do so.

The diagram gave me one question, which I could not find answered in the book. As I understand it, the party that receives/consumes the investment ( the service provider ) is not the same as the payor. The payor pays the investors when the actions of the service provider reach a certain measurable threshold of effect ( like an amount of drinking water delivered ). But what happens when that effect is not reached? Will the investor simply loose their money, or will someone else repay their investment?

I found the case studies very illustrative of how such finance instruments can be used for fire protection, water supply, waste water processing and storm flood protection. It should be noticed however, that the cases all take place in California, or the West coast area of the USA and that the payors are governmental agencies or at least organizations working for public service deliveries, which means that in the end tax payers or public service users ( to stay with the drinking water example, the public that pays their water bills ) pay the investment. These two factors mean that there is a reasonable supply of money to the payor to repay the debt and thus a relatively low risk to the investors. Right?

If I got this more or less right then to me the value of the book is that it shows how conservation finance can work in an economically developed country for conservation causes that have a clear and direct impact on the citizens.

Vance Russell

25 November 2024 2:27pm

Thanks for the kind and insightful words, Frank. You're right that most examples are from California or the West, showing how these mechanisms may work in the developing world. Impact finance bonds were originally conceived in the UK social sector. There are several examples we don't mention, and probably should, from the developing south of finance tools that have largely been applied to community development. Revolving loan funds (Mohammad Yunus is the most prominent example) have been used for decades to spur small business development with small loans to get businesses kickstarted in difficult economic settings. There are several instances of parametric insurance set up in developing countries; the Yucatan hurricane scheme set up by Swiss Re and the Nature Conservancy is probably the best known.

Good question about impact finance bonds and outcomes not being reached. Although I don't know of any examples, I would assume that the investors are not paid. This isn't unlike any investment in that the risk of not receiving a return is always there.

The multi-part aspect of these approaches does have its pluses/minuses. On the one hand, it should create a collaborative finance culture that promotes cooperation rather than competition for limited funding resources. On the other hand, this means, like any collaborative, that it will take a while to set up, build trust, and get operational. This also means bespoke solutions for most settings, which can or will limit scaling.

Again, thanks for taking the time to read the book. Appreciate your feedback and questions!

Frank van der Most

25 November 2024 3:07pm

Thank you for elaborating Vance. I think I know of the revolving loan funds as micro credit systems.

Interesting point, about the time it takes to set up and build trust. But I guess that once it is set up in a geographical area and starts repaying the investors, setting up another application with just one new actor might go a lot faster. There must be a word for it in economics, but I don't now it. It's not scaling up but using existing momentum.

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