What are some of the market mechanisms that work for conservation?
There are huge needs for fresh water. And there are engineering solutions, but there are also a lot of nature-based solutions. For example, Quito, Ecuador, was considering building a filtration plant for the city’s water. But we went to them with a business argument, not a conservation argument, that if Quito paid for good, thoughtful upstream conservation it would get clean, secure water at a lower cost. It’s been an enormous success. It was so well received that we now have about a dozen of these across Latin America. And that excites us, too, because one-off projects are never going to really move the needle. We need to do projects that can be replicated, and not just by us. Another exciting element of these funds is that they are not based on a philanthropically-intensive model. Even at our scale, and we’re the biggest environmental nonprofit, we’re not big enough make the necessary changes alone. These water funds are self-funding, eventually. We get it started, but thereafter, th
