Friday, July 18, 2008

Preparing to Launch Forest Investment Zones

A pebble dropped in water creates ripples that are initially small; but they rapidly grow in circumference. That’s how the Endowment envisions the results of our largest programmatic initiative to date: Forest Investment Zones: Co-Creating Innovation and Learning at the Regional Scale. Even though the initiative will focus on a small number of regions, our intent is for the benefits to be shared broadly as models that can be implemented in communities across the nation. The notion of co-creating this program is critical to success as we look to those closest to the ground to help us build and implement the concept.

Implementing a programmatic approach to funding at the nexus of forest health and community resilience is a major framework for the Endowment’s work. This framework was built upon initial conversation within the Endowment’s Board and staff, outreach to professional networks, a national survey of needs and opportunities and a national workshop that allowed depth and breadth of discovery.

The national workshop highlighted the opportunity to work strategically by focusing in specific geographic regions identified as “Forest Investment Zones.” We were intrigued by this notion and began a series of actions to build upon the idea. We have work underway in a number of initial efforts intended to provide a solid foundation for this signature work. Among some of these early works are:

1. A soon be implemented process to add information about conservation easements on forested lands that will help bring into focus a more complete picture when combined with public lands. Not only should this provide a glimpse of the opportunities for long term working forests, but it should also allow better targeting and coordination of limited financial resources;

2. Gathering information with regard to the benefits of “clustering” intended to uncover innovative business models and provide important information about ways to enhance market connections for new business opportunities. And,

3. Work to identify the state of community-based forestry endeavors that provide examples of existing community/regional work at the nexus of healthy working forests and vibrant forest-reliant communities.

The concept of forest investment zones has the potential to demonstrate the breadth of the Endowment’s Mission and Theory of Change. The work within zones stands to showcase actions that promote the health of working forests, create new business models and stimulate value-added production that is structured to create benefits for communities. This occurs because all three components are the focus of the work…market conditions (value streams), strategies to maintain healthy working forests…and, assisting communities to directly enhance their capacity needs to build a brighter future.

Working at the regional level is daunting, but many economic theorists agree that such is the best way for communities to mitigate impacts and seize opportunities resulting from globalization, climate change, and living in a post-cheap-energy world.

The Endowment will over the next few days release a Request for Pre-proposals (RFP) to begin this process. We anticipate selecting three responses nationally. They will be geographically diverse and respond to the variety of opportunity for retaining working forests, capturing value streams and enhancing community capacity. We will be looking for mature regional intermediary organizations or networks to assist with implementation. After all, it is the people working closest to the ground who have the connections, information and ideas necessary to not only influence their own future but also to help us all learn together.

Our hope is that this work will create additional ripples of innovation, inspiration and positive change across the nation.

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Definitions:

Regional intermediary:
high-capacity organizations or networks of organizations who commonly work together. They are familiar with influences, drivers and opportunities in their given regions.

Region/forest investment zone: The base criteria for identifying Forest Investment Zone candidate areas include:

1. Multi-county, multi-community, and/or, where possible, a multi-state area that is considered as a region and shares characteristics common to other areas of the nation (living laboratories/incubators);

2. Sufficient amount of working forest (public and/or private) is available for a significant/foreseeable period (e.g. at least 25 years) to support a variety of forest-based business opportunities (Most of the work will be focused in areas that are likely to remain in a heavily forested condition where there are no currently known threats that suggest wholesale conversion to non-forest uses– for instance, the area is not in the immediate path of a major urban/suburban growth pattern.); and

3. Traditional forestry businesses (either pulp/paper, sawmilling and other related businesses) have been a significant part of the area’s development history and continue to be important today, although perhaps a declining segment of the economy.


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