This news was first published by EcoAgriculture

Integrated landscape finance refers to systems of finance coordination and blending that support multi-project, multi-sector sets of inter-related investments, endorsed by a broad range of stakeholders in a landscape. CPIC’s Landscape and Seascape working group was formed to better understand and promote models of landscape finance. One of the first steps of this working group was to embark on a study to assess the key elements of integrated landscape finance, survey existing models, synthesize lessons learned, and suggest what can be done to support the success and scaling of these models in the future. This study, also supported by WWF’s Landscape Finance Lab and the 1000 Landscapes for 1 Billion People Initiative, is the result of this effort.

The 40 models identified in the paper are split between landscape investment service providers and landscape finance vehicles. The service providers assist landscape partnerships to create landscape action plans and translate those ideas into coordinated sets of private and public investment ideas that have an impact at scale. The vehicles are an emerging class of investment entities designed explicitly to finance these sets of landscape activities.

While these models are promising, there is an enormous amount of work to be done by all actors in these systems to scale them up. Financial institutions, business schools, agriculture and environmental policy research centers and universities will need to step up research in this area. New models for support services and investment vehicles can be created based on the lessons of this first wave of innovators. Also, policy action will be required by national and local governments to develop the strategies and capacities to support and co-invest in integrated landscapes

You can read the full report here.