This week’s newsletter highlights 3 areas in the continued exploration of finance, incentives and technology in the business of American Nature.
Conservation Finance
Innovative financial instruments in support of positive environmental outcomes will always have a home in this newsletter. Combined with the hidden economic incentives of conservation, it’s the reason I began writing down my thoughts here in the first place. Recently, the Paulson Institute (the namesake of former US treasury secretary and CEO of Goldman Sachs, Henry Paulson Jr.) released a report setting the annual global funding gap for achieving biodiversity goals at around $700 Billion. Additionally, the study also reveals that governments spend about $500 Billion in investments that adversely affect biodiversity each year (so $1.2T net negative). Having a goal is an important step and I applaud them for working towards a “number” that can motivate the metric driven institutional investment markets. We need to speak each other’s language and this is a great step. Check out the full report here.
Impossible Data
When we think about data being gathered in National Parks and public lands we often point to metrics that have long been documented and studied: visitor use fees and the routine behaviors or transactions where information is exchanged for entrance to an area, campground, or access to a fishing or hunting license. Hard data. Some layers of information have been added recently, including the number of vehicles through an entrance gate or people in a visitor center at certain times using human or automated counting methods. Some parks have even begun visitor surveys to gauge attitudes and experience level. But these are costly, human intensive, and a bit of a nuisance where traffic and congestion are at all time highs. Relatively speaking, the data we have on public land visitors is very limited. Paraphrasing a retired former superintendent of Yellowstone National Park (Dan Wenk):
“We know more about the animals inside this park than the 4 million humans that enter it”.
But what if data could be scraped from each and every individual that enters the park or natural area, anonymously and privately, via a mobile device? That is exactly what a team of researchers did in South Africa recently. Imagine the data: photos, emojis, precise location, routes, hotel stays, popular restaurants, weather etc. that could be studied and overlaid with existing data sets? Is that useful to the managers of these resources? Impossible Data - no more.
photo: National Park Service
Technology
One of my favorite annual rituals that has come out of the department of interior has to be “Fat Bear Week” in Katmai National Park, Alaska. What started as an innocent webcam, streaming the bears in their natural habitat, filling their tummies with salmon to prepare for winter, has now become a global phenomenon. Viewers are asked to vote for the bears they think have grown (plumped up) the most (in true bracket madness fashion) and scientists verify this with, wait for it, LIDAR technology. Simply amazing. After all, it’s hard to get these hungry bears on a scale.
photo source: lidarnews.com
TWIB Notes:
Storytelling and marketing are as important to an NGO for raising money and affinity as it is for Coca-Cola to sell cans of delicious soda. But unlike corporations, the resources are limited. This new partnership provides non-profits with access to professional creative resources to advance their mission.
Here at Interior Analytics we applaud and support the Corporate Social Responsibility movement. But it is important to understand where it falls short and how to examine its true objectives and outcomes within a company. Honesty and transparency is OK after all. Here is a unique take from the head of CSR at Kathmandu, Gary Shaw, calling bullshit on corporate social responsibility.
This week in art inspired by nature:
Alaskan Brown Bear Diorama - New York Museum of Natural History