Blue Forest Conservation Revenue and Competitors

Founded by a team of UC Berkeley MBAs with extensive public sector, environmental NGO, engineering, and Wall Street experience, Blue Forest Conservation (BFC) is committed to harnessing financial innovation to develop sustainable investment solutions to pressing environmental challenges. Supported by the Rockefeller and Packard Foundations and in partnership with Encourage Capital and World Resources Institute, BFC is developing the first outcomes-based security focused on forest and watershed health – the Forest Resilience Bond (FRB). Similar in purpose and function to a Social Impact Bond, the FRB deploys private capital to make our national forests more resilient to a changing climate. By investing in restoration projects that protect forest health, we can mitigate both wildfire and drought risk. Contracting with public and private beneficiaries to monetize the multifaceted benefits of forest restoration, the FRB creates value for a diverse set of stakeholders (including the US Forest Service, water and electric utilities, private water-dependent companies, state governments, and insurance companies). Specifically, the FRB leverages increasingly scarce public dollars for forest restoration through the following mechanisms: (1) sharing costs (and benefits) to reduce aggregate costs to each individual stakeholder; (2) tapping private capital to allow for amortization of costs over time; and (3) accelerating restoration treatments to prevent further overgrowth and future costs to stakeholders. Once successful, the FRB will serve as a new public-private partnership model to enhance climate resilience.