Expanding Finance for Nature-Based Solutions to Achieve Climate, Environment, and Community Goals: An Introduction for Green Banks and Community Lenders
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2023-11-14
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Abstract
Nature-based solutions are actions to protect, manage, or restore natural or modified ecosystems that address societal challenges, simultaneously benefiting people and nature. There has been unprecedented recent government investment in nature-based solutions through programs funded by the Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, but there remains a need for scaled-up financing of these projects in the United States. This need presents an opportunity to leverage green banks'—and other similar financial service providers like community development financial institutions'—financing capabilities.
This document lays out a vision that describes why nature-based solutions are relevant and important to green banks' and community development financial institutions' climate- and community-driven missions, and what types of projects these institutions might support.
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Mason, Sara, and Lydia Olander (2023). Expanding Finance for Nature-Based Solutions to Achieve Climate, Environment, and Community Goals: An Introduction for Green Banks and Community Lenders. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/31689.
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Sara Mason
Sara Mason joined the Ecosystem Services Program at the Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment & Sustainability as a policy associate after graduating from Duke with a master’s degree in environmental management. Her work focuses on the interdisciplinary nature of biodiversity conservation and how that can be leveraged to engage the public and policy makers in conservation efforts. Prior to joining the Nicholas Institute, Sara worked in ecological field research and endangered animal rehabilitation.
Lydia Olander
Lydia Olander is a program director at the Nicholas Institute for Energy Environment & Sustainability at Duke University and adjunct professor at the Nicholas School of the Environment. She works on improving evidence-based policy and accelerating implementation of climate resilience, nature-based solutions, natural capital accounting, and environmental markets. She leads the National Ecosystem Services Partnership and sits on Duke’s Climate Commitment action team. She recently spent two years with the Biden administration at the Council on Environmental Quality as Director of Nature based Resilience and before that spent five years on the Environmental Advisory Board for the US Army Corps of Engineers. She is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and widely published researcher. Prior to joining the Nicholas Institute, she spent a year as an AAAS Congressional Science and Technology Fellow working with Senator Joseph Lieberman on environmental and energy issues. She was a college scholar at Cornell University and earned her Master of Forest Science from Yale University and Ph.D. from Stanford University.
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