Financing Nature-based Solutions: Insights from CDFI Policy and Practice

At this invitation-only roundtable, The New York Community Trust will bring together leading community development and green finance practitioners, thinkers, supporters, and funders to discuss how decades of community development finance institution (CDFI) experience can inform burgeoning efforts to fund nature-based climate solutions, conservation efforts, and ecosystem restoration. With New Leaf Climate on the verge of establishing the nation’s first Nature-based Development Finance Institution (NDFI), which will be designed to mobilize private capital for restoration and conservation in rural and largely underserved communities, this timely event will be highly interactive and all attendees will be encouraged to contribute to the discussion. As currently envisioned, NDFIs would essentially serve as CDFIs for Nature—building on a proven playbook from impact finance and applying it with a narrow focus on the entrepreneurs, small businesses, nonprofits, and owners of working lands that steward and regenerate land in the US. By utilizing catalytic public and philanthropic capital to unlock low-cost private investment, recycle dollars through recoverable loans, and build the track record needed to crowd in larger pools of capital over time, the NDFI unlocks the possibility for ranchers, foresters, and rural enterprises to make measurable and sustainable gains for carbon, water, and biodiversity outcomes across the US. The development and growth of Green Banks and CDFIs offer significant lessons on what works, what doesn’t, and under what conditions financing innovations for impact can scale. Affordable housing and renewable energy are sectors that once faced the same skepticism and high cost of capital that restoration faces today—and now billions of dollars flow through these entities each year, crowding in billions more in co-investment. Date: Friday, September 25 Time: 9-11 a.m. ET Location: The New York Community Trust, 909 Third Avenue, 22nd Floor Moderator: Arturo Garcia-Costas Discussants: Greg Levin – Principal, New Leaf Climate Sadie McKeown – Head of Innovation, Community Preservation Corporation Ellen Lurie Hoffman – Executive Director, Center for Impact Finance Megan Rosa – Associate Director, New York City Energy Efficiency Corporation Participation at this event is by invitation only. To express your interest in attending, contact Chiara Ricisak (cricisak@thenytrust.org).