¹Chairman, Financial Services Industry Advisory Council, The Nature Conservancy

^*A word of thanks to Sheldon Cohen, Mike Coda, and Maheen Qureshi of The Nature Conservancy for their help in researching this paper.

Abstract

With the issue of environmental degradation already well covered in this journal and many others, this paper will briefly review value creation/destruction models for the risk industry, provide an overview of conservation finance mechanisms that have been deployed to date, and finally present in some depth a menu of very specific insurance products/services that could be developed and deployed in support of conservation initiatives. Beyond just supporting the underlying "alignment of interests" thesis that drives this paper, it is hoped that the thoughts presented will serve to accelerate meaningful joint initiatives between those who are working to protect the planet, and those who are quite legitimately working to protect their balance sheets.