Resilience Dispatch #29: Our Impact in 2022

Dec 1, 2022

Dear Friends,

I am very proud to share with you our 2022 Impact Report. In it, you can read about our achievements this past year, stories of change, progress, and hope for the future.

Forest Trends was founded with the mission of putting an economic engine behind nature conservation – the idea being that our economy, our society, and our wellbeing all depend in very real and material ways on healthy natural ecosystems.

That idea’s time has come. The world is looking to “nature-based solutions” to combat climate change, mitigate water risks, prevent pandemics, protect biodiversity, support food insecurity, and so on. Forest Trends is fielding many new opportunities at a totally different scale than in the past, and at a much more systemic level. In this respect, 2022 has been an unusually successful year for us.

But the stakes are also higher now. The science is telling us we have only until 2030 to take the necessary steps for a safe climate trajectory. I am feeling a lot of urgency, as I am sure you are too.
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Your generous support helps increase the impact of our programs, mobilizing climate solutions and investments where they’re most needed. It fuels our ongoing work toward healthy ecosystems, clean water, robust science, sustainable agriculture, and resilient communities. You may learn more about our work or give online at www.forest-trends.org/support-us.

The years ahead are going to ask a lot of us all, but I am incredibly proud of the work we’ve done together this year. Forest Trends will continue to stand up in the climate fight, for our partners (and especially the indigenous and rural communities so often caught on the front lines), and for the future. We hope you will join us in both the work and the celebrations of successes.

Wishing you and your loved ones a great deal of joy this holiday season – and resilience in the New Year!

Michael

HERE’S WHAT WE DID IN 2022

We’re mobilizing finance for nature-based solutions.

In 2022, we helped mobilize finance for nature at scale through market development, project incubation, generating pipelines of investment-ready projects, and designing innovative financing approaches – while pushing to make climate and conservation finance more transparent and equitable.
$340 million
value of the investment portfolio we’ve built in Peru for nature-based solutions for water security and climate resilience – the most ambitious in Latin America. This portfolio has grown more than 20% in the last 12 months.$2 billion
annual value of voluntary carbon market transactions, according to Ecosystem Marketplace, the world’s biggest repository of data on voluntary carbon markets trading – and one of the few major market players that are non-profit. We’re the established source of market data for the World Bank and the UN, as well as governments, businesses, NGOs, and market participants.Read more about how we’re mobilizing finance for nature.
“When it comes to creative ideas, Forest Trends has no peer. They’re constantly innovating. They’re working in the field and at the decision-making tables. It’s unique. There really is no other organization like Forest Trends out there.”

— Jim Salzman, long-time partner, donor, and Fellow; Distinguished Professor
of environmental law at University of California, Los Angeles Law School and
the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management

We’re equipping the next generation of leaders and institutions.

We’re a small organization by design: we believe our impact is ultimately far larger when we work through partnerships and support local champions. A key pillar of our work is leadership development and capacity building – with a special focus on amplifying diverse voices, including women, indigenous peoples, elders, and youth.
Two journalists from Puno, Nélida Maquera and Dayane Mayta, participated in a workshop to improve their journalistic pieces selected under the Forest Trends-supported Journalist Fund, Tarapoto, Peru. August 2022.
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government agencies worldwide advised on keeping illegally logged wood products out of their domestic markets, via our Timber Regulation Enforcement Exchange (TREE) network.632
people participated in a virtual training designed for indigenous and local communities on navigating new carbon credit programs. Attendees came from 26 countries, and over half were women.Read more about our leadership development and capacity-building work.

We’re partnering with indigenous and local communities to thrive in the new green economy.

We provide incubation support to forest-friendly business models and producers to bring their enterprises to market scale – from business planning and seed funding, to market connections that help producers capture more value and sustain a healthy planet.
A youth exchange in the Tupi Mosaic, Brazil, focused on sustainable açaí production. Credit: Suellen Mangueira
10
villages in Myanmar’s Salween Peace Park participated in planning on community forestry rooted in community ownership and management – laying out an alternative vision from the extractive economic model currently in place under Myanmar’s military junta.21
 indigenous peoples managing 1.5 million hectares benefitted from enterprise development support for forest-friendly value chains in the Brazilian Amazon.Here’s how we’re bringing forest-friendly business models to scale around the world.
“In 2015, we had the idea to create a store for the women [artisans] of Rondônia, a dream that only came true in 2018 with the support of Forest Trends.”

— Marciely Ayap Tupari, Manager of Tecê-AGIR (Association of Women Indigenous Warriors from Rondônia) in Brazil, a sales platform for women artisans

This is just a sample of what we’ve achieved this year! 

Download the Forest Trends 2022 Impact Report