The Katoomba Group » Katoomba Ecosystem Services Incubator

The Katoomba Ecosystem Services Incubator supports innovative ecosystem services projects as a means to catalyze markets and build capacity in Latin America and Africa.  The Incubator strategically invests in the development phase of projects with strong community and biodiversity benefits, enabling projects and local partners to reach the point where they can effectively engage private investors or buyers on solid, equitable footing.   The Incubator provides a suite of technical, business and legal support to help local partners grow their projects, drawing both on its own specialists and the Katoomba Group’s extensive network of leading experts and practitioners around the world.

The Incubator seeks to lower barriers to mobilizing ecosystem finance by creating best-practice examples, systematizing tools and templates, exploring aggregation strategies and informing policy development.  Launched in late 2007, the Incubator focused initially on Latin America, supporting 5 projects in the region (Mexico, Honduras, Brazil and Ecuador).  Similar initiatives are now under way for Eastern and Southern Africa and West Africa (focused on Uganda/Tanzania and Ghana/Liberia, respectively).  With an initial emphasis on carbon markets, particularly REDD, the Incubator has a strong broader interest in multiple-ecosystem service projects.