Abstract
Our vision: To impel climate change mitigation action by motivating private investments in sustainably managed forest ecosystem services. Our contribution: To address a critical KE gap between expertise on the mapping, modelling and quantification of the risk of forest carbon loss, and investor s confidence in forest investments (including in REDD+). Our focus: To address 4 categories of risks (i) Climatic (ii) Fire (iii) Anthropogenic and (iv) Regulatory. Our aim: To stimulate the exploitation of UK s world-class knowledge base -NERC and elsewhere - in forest loss and risk mapping by the UK knowledge brokers and financial institutions. Our impacts: To deliver, as a consequence of this work, a more accurate and holistic understanding of the real risk represented by forest propositions around the world; a more stable and mainstream investment environment for forestry and; to bring forestry from the margins of business, to a business line as common as aviation, motor or life and pensions. We request funding for a period of 12 months to support the creation of a ForestRisks-for-Finance Network. Partners, including WillisRE Ltd., ForestRe Ltd., Ecometrica Ltd, Acclimatise Ltd. The Edinburgh Centre on Climate Change, and Forest Research will contribute more than £55,000 in-cash and in-kind to this KE initiative. A PDRA will be appointed to effectively bring together the NERC funded and UK research community (on forest-loss risks) as well as to proactively engage with potential users (Brokers & End users). This initiative stems from (a) recommendations made at the NERC-funded Long Finance symposia on "Forestry and Finance: Where s the data" (London, July 2010 and Sept 2010), to which the PI (Patenaude) was an invited panellist and (b) the wider KE activities led by Richard Max-Lino (NERC Knowledge and Innovation Manager, Financial Services) and the Long Finance initiative (http://www.zyen.com/long-finance.html).
United Kingdom