WEBVTT

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Zach, welcome.

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Tell me about the work that
you're doing at Blue Forest.

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Yeah, thank you so much.

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Blue Forest is a nonprofit
conservation finance

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organization.

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So we work with people, science
and finance to restore

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landscapes and protect
communities from things like

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catastrophic wildfire.

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We were founded in 2015, and
we've been restoring landscapes

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really ever since.

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We do all this through our
primary product, which is the

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Forest Resilience Bond. And this
is a public-private partnership

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that we built with the US Forest
Service, the World Resources

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Institute and the National
Forest Foundation. And its

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purpose- built: to finance the
implementation of nature based

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solutions on our public lands.

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How have you seen that grow, and

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Where else are you identifying
opportunities?

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Yeah, well I'd love to tell you
a little bit of how it works as

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well.

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So once a project has been
planned and there's community

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support, we actually bring in
financing from institutional

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investors such as insurance
companies, impact investors,

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even foundations to cover the
upfront cost of doing this work.

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And then we allow all the groups
that benefit from that to pay

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that back overtime based on the
benefit that they receive.

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And that could include the US
Forest Service, state agencies,

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water and electric utilities and
even corporates in certain

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cases. Partnerships sound vital.

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They really are.

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We can't get to landscape-scale
work without building social

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license in these communities.

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So what we do is in partnering
with the local forest units or a

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local NGO or a native nation,
really gives us a 360 view of

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what this project entails and
what the best financing solution

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for that might be.

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And it makes more durable work
for us.

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As that work grows, it's less
risky for us, as well, to expand

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our work and really get at
reducing that wildfire risk.

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Where are you identifying the
biggest finance opportunities in

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conservation over the next 5, 10
years?

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Yeah, absolutely.

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So I think the first thing is
we've only scratched the surface

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on the applied science to really
understand the benefits of this

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work.

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So I imagine this type of
financing model could be used in

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a lot of different landscape
restoration programs as we

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better understand all the
benefits of of a restored

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landscape.

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We've also launched a new asset
management business, which is

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really exciting from my
perspective.

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And what that was built from was
the idea that the system that

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we're working in, it's not
working the way that we'd like

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it to.

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There's not enough contractors,
there's not enough equipment,

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there's not enough
infrastructure to sort of handle

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the pace and scale of this work
right now.

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So actually in partnership with
an insurance company, CSAA, they

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are AAA's northern California
affiliate, we launched both Blue

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Forest Asset Management and our
first strategy to California

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Wildfire Innovation Fund that is
really investing from the

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harvesting and the hauling of
this material to the processing

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and the utilization focus on
community scale efforts and

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getting us better carbon
outcomes, better economic

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outcomes from doing some of this
really important forestry work.

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Zach, thank you so much.

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Thank you.