Date: December 12th
Time: 12pm and 9pm EST
Katy Mathias, co-author of the Conservation Trust Investment Survey (CTIS) will share findings from the annual CTIS study for calendar year 2018. In addition, Katy will share some preliminary information from the forthcoming multi-year study of CTF investment data, drawing on the CTIS project's 13 years of data. The webinar will be held twice to accommodate as many time zones as possible.
Katy Mathias, manager of the Conservation Trust Investment Survey (CTIS) Project and co-author, with Ray Victurine, of the CTIS annual report, conducted two webinars for CFA members on December 18 to share results of the CTIS report for Calendar Year 2017. The presentations were held 12 hours apart to accommodate a range of time zones. A webinar audio recording and Powerpoint slides, as well as a link to the 2017 report, are available on the CFA website.
The webinar highlighted key findings from the most recent study. The participants' organizational and endowment nominal investment returns for calendar year 2017 were higher than those from 2016, while sinking fund returns were slightly below 2016. In general, however, CTF returns were lower than might be expected given global investment performance in 2017. This may be attributed to, on average, the CTFs' tendency to under-allocate equity, relative to fixed income and cash.
The CFA held a Members and Partners meeting in North America at World Wildlife Fund’s offices in Washington DC on October 12th. The meeting and networking event was a great opportunity to share the CFA’s activities and strategy as well as hear from a range of members and partners and build on the CFA’s outreach. This event comes as part of our effort to energize the network and build momentum for the wide range of conservation finance initiatives we are all working on.
In addition to a presentation from the CFA Executive Director (that can be found here) we heard from a range of partners including Melissa Moye who spoke about WWF’s many conservation finance initiatives including their Project Finance for Permanence (PFP) which recently closed on the Bhutan for Lifeproject. Chris Stone and Romas Garbaliauskas from Conservation International respectively shared their efforts to support over 30 Conservation Trust Funds (CTFs) through the Global Conservation Fund and implement a range of innovative approaches to engage the private sector in conservation finance – in part through the Coalition for Private Investment in Conservation (CPIC). Frank Hawkins of IUCN presented a detailed overview of CPIC’s initiatives including work on blueprints to replicate and scale private investments in conservation. Forest Trends and Ecosystem Marketplace were represented by Kelly Hamrick and Michael Jenkins who shared their work on tracking market mechanisms for conservation and a publication last year on The State of Private Investment in Conservation. Katy Mathias of the Wildlife Conservation Society explained a range of activities being implemented by WCS including work on biodiversity offsets, coral reef finance, and the Conservation Trust Investment Survey(CTIS) that is a collaborative annual report on CTF investment strategies and results. Active discussions and questions continued through a short networking session. As well, the Protected Areas Finance Working Group was officially relaunched by Charles Besancon as Chair (see related news).
We are excited to announce that the tenth report of the Conservation Trust Fund Investment Survey (CTIS) series has been released and is available for download. The report overs the performance of Conservation Trust Funds during the calendar year of 2016 and relies on information provided by 38 Funds from 47 countries about endowments and sinking funds.
The 2016 CTIS is available for download here as well as in the CFA Library.
For your consideration from the CTIS project: Conservation Trust Funds and other institutional investors who are thinking about ways to align your portfolios with your mission, especially around climate change issues, may be interested in recent work by Cambridge Associates and the Intentional Endowments Network. Their primary audience was US-based institutional investors, but the concepts are relevant to all institutional investors considering how to incorporate environmental issues into the investment policy. Their suggested framework -- Purpose, Priorities, Principles -- can offer a discussion approach for Investment Committees and a starting point for a CTF's further exploration with its investment professionals.
You can check out the full press release on the Intentional Endowments site here.
The 2016 CTIS is now available in both French and Spanish. The PDFs are available for download in the Library section of the CFA website.
The Conservation Trust Investment Survey report for Calendar Year 2015, put together by The Wildlife Conservation Society and the Conservation Finance Alliance, in partnership with RedLAC and CAFÉ, is now updated and available for download. The document now includes a foreword written by Greg Alexander and Scott O'Connell of Acacia Partners.
The updated version can be found here or in the CTIS Publications section of the Library.
The Wildlife Conservation Society and the Conservation Finance Alliance, in partnership with RedLAC and CAFÉ, are pleased to share the Conservation Trust Investment Survey report for Calendar Year 2015. Funding for the report was provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the Linden Trust for Conservation, and Acacia Partners.
Each year we are grateful for the investment insights of Greg Alexander in the Foreword. Due to some timing constraints we are issuing the report without the Foreword for now, but will provide an updated document as soon as the Foreword is ready, likely in a week or two. Spanish and French versions will be ready shortly. The English version can be downloaded here or in the CTIS section of the library.
