Carbon Dioxide Removal Initiative
In virtually all realistic scenarios, reductions in global greenhouse-gas emissions over the next several decades will not be nearly sufficient to limit global warming to safe levels. Consequently, emission-reduction efforts must be supplemented by activities to remove carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere and store it safely and permanently. The scale of this required removal is immense—as much as 25% of today’s global emissions annually by 2050, and double that level by 2100. All available techniques, both technological and natural, are needed. This includes direct air capture; technologies that enhance the carbon absorption of earth systems such as oceans, plants and minerals; and natural techniques such as reforestation and changes in agricultural practices. Because carbon dioxide removal is a classic “public good,” this will not happen at the needed scale without substantial government support.
ACI’s objective is for the U.S. government to put in place a sufficiently robust set of policies and programs to ensure that carbon dioxide removal (CDR) has a reasonable chance of closing the gap between actual and desired net emission levels in the U.S. by the middle of this century. These policies and programs must include RD&D spending, economic incentives, and regulatory measures. Our initiative was launched in 2017 and began with community education, policy analysis and program design. In recent years we have been deeply involved in policymaker education across the range of needed CDR policies, including those enacted in the Energy Act of 2020, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law of 2021, and the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.
Geothermal Power Initiative
Decarbonizing the electric power sector is at the core of any strategy to decarbonize the U.S. economy. Wind and solar power are low in cost and will therefore play a large role, but they also face critical challenges to achieving the needed scale, due to their intermittency, increasing social pushback, political opposition, and dependence on rare materials for batteries. Next-generation geothermal power, made possible by new drilling techniques, is potentially superior on all of these dimensions, although currently higher in cost. Uniquely among non-CO2-emitting power sources, it provides firm and dispatchable power (so deals directly with the intermittency of other non-emitting power sources); its small physical footprint should minimize NIMBY resistance; it presents the possibility of broad support across the political spectrum; and it does not rely on rare materials. Policies are needed to prove out the technologies, bring down the cost, and realize the scale potential of geothermal. All the other major low-carbon energy technologies, including wind, solar, nuclear, hydrogen, and carbon capture, have received substantial policy support, yet geothermal has received virtually none. This presents a compelling opportunity for a coalition-building and advocacy effort to gain comparable support. We started such an effort in 2023.
Carbon Pricing Initiative
From 2014 to 2021 we conducted a carbon pricing initiative, which sought the adoption of an economy-wide, market-based approach to address the challenge of climate change and advance a clean-energy economy. Central to that objective was supporting policies that can boost the economy, job creation and innovation while cutting pollution. Goals for the program were to (1) develop policy proposals based on the best research and analysis and (2) nurture a national conversation about economically sound approaches.
Conservation Finance and Environmental Markets
Environmental Markets
Reductions in Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (“REDD”). Deforestation is the single largest cause of biodiversity loss worldwide and also accounts for approximately 10% of global greenhouse-gas emissions. We supported the effort to amend the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to allow carbon credits to be granted to countries that demonstrate reductions in their emissions of carbon dioxide due to deforestation. Because the treaty currently provides no incentive for countries to reduce deforestation, we believe that this change could have a very significant impact, both in biodiversity conservation and in mitigating climate change, by providing, for the first time, a significant economic value to standing trees. In the absence of an amendment to the treaty, we also supported efforts to secure multi-billion-dollar, multi-year funding to launch REDD activities in multiple tropical countries. Project period: 2006-2016.
Reducing Carbon Emissions from Coastal Ecosystems (“Blue Carbon”). Coastal ecosystems such as mangroves, salt marshes, and seagrass meadows are highly biodiverse, vitally important to broader marine life, and provide critical services such as pollution filtration and storm protection. Yet, due to coastal development, agriculture, aquaculture, pollution and other forces, they are being lost around the world at up to 2% per year – about four times as fast as tropical forests. In the search for tools to halt or reverse this trend, regulation has had some effect in developed countries, but in most of the world, the trajectory of rapid loss continues. In this context, Blue Carbon stands out as having significant potential. These ecosystems sequester carbon at a high rate – likely more per square meter than any other major ecosystem – and the sediment under them contains centuries or millennia of accreted carbon. So their destruction not only halts the sequestration flux but also causes substantial emissions of previously-sequestered carbon from the sediment. This in turn may make it possible to create a linkage between the protection or restoration of these ecosystems and financial flows from carbon markets. We supported (1) efforts to estimate the magnitude of blue-carbon emissions; (2) preliminary economic analyses to determine whether and where the potential revenue from Blue Carbon offset credits may outweigh the costs of protecting or restoring these ecosystems; and (3) efforts to incorporate mechanisms under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to compensate the protection and restoration of these ecosystems. Project period: 2010-2016.
Conservation Finance
ARPA for Life (Brazil). The Amazon basin is a landscape of global importance. It covers more than 670 million hectares (1.6 billion acres), an area about two-thirds the size of the U.S., and spans nine countries; Brazil accounts for 60%. It is home to half of the world’s remaining tropical forests, one-fifth of Earth’s available fresh water, and approximately one in ten known species on Earth. Furthermore, more than 30 million people, including 350 indigenous and ethnic groups, live in and depend on the Amazon. Unfortunately, about 20% of the Amazon forest has already been lost, and the destruction continues, due to unsustainable expansion of agriculture and cattle ranching, construction of roads and dams, and extractive activities. In 1998, Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso pledged to protect 10% of the Brazilian Amazon. The lasting result of that declaration is the Amazon Region Protected Areas (ARPA) program, whose goal is to secure long-term protection for an ecologically representative sample of the biodiversity of the Brazilian Amazon in well-managed protected areas. ARPA now seeks to protect 15% of the Brazilian Amazon, or 60 million hectares (150 million acres) – an area equivalent to three times the size of the entire U.S. national-parks system. ARPA has made major strides toward that goal, yet it is incomplete. The remaining challenge is to complete the network and, crucially, to secure all the financial and institutional resources needed to protect it. The “ARPA for Life” project, which closed in 2014, mobilized, in a single deal, all the financial and other commitments needed to permanently protect ARPA’s 60 million hectares. The deal included commitments by donors to place $215 million into a new trust fund, the ARPA Transition Fund, and commitments by the Brazilian government to expand and strengthen the protected areas and to gradually increase its own funding of the network. The Transition Fund supplements the government’s funding, in diminishing amounts over 25 years, as and if the government increases its funding and continues to expand and protect the areas. The purpose of this deal is to assist and motivate the Brazilian government to strengthen and take full financial ownership of ARPA. The 60 million hectare size of ARPA makes “ARPA for Life” the single largest land conservation deal in history. Linden Trust for Conservation partnered with the World Wildlife Fund and the Brazilian government to design and execute the deal. Project period: 2011-2014.
Forever Costa Rica. Many countries’ natural heritages suffer not only because insufficient areas have been designated as protected from development, but also because there are insufficient funds to manage those areas that are protected. Costa Rica has been a world leader in assigning national-park or other protected status to approximately 25% of its territory. This land, totaling 1.3 million hectares (3.2 million acres), is believed to harbor as much as 4% of the world’s biodiversity — roughly equivalent to all the species in the United States and Canada combined. However, this system has lacked funding structures to ensure that it will be well-managed in perpetuity. In addition, the country’s current marine protected areas have been inadequate to sustain its collapsing fisheries and protect its extraordinary diversity of marine life. With the Forever Costa Rica project, whose implementation began in 2010, Costa Rica intends to at least double its marine protected areas and dramatically improve management of both its marine and terrestrial protected-area systems. Critically, it is doing this on the basis of sustainable financing secured by the project. This includes increased government expenditures and $57 million in new funding from external private, bilateral and multilateral donors, managed by a newly created, independent, special-purpose trust fund. When the project is fully implemented, it will make Costa Rica the first developing nation to achieve all of the protected-area goals of the United Nations’ Convention on Biological Diversity and will thereby position it to serve as a model for others. Linden Trust for Conservation conceived and launched this project in 2007 in conjunction with then-President Arias of Costa Rica, recruited our partners, and led the management of the project through its closing in 2010. Implementation is being led by a newly-created trust, the Forever Costa Rica Association, in partnership with the government of Costa Rica. Project period: 2007-2014.
Expanding and Financing the Park System in Chilean Patagonia. Tompkins Conservation (TC), a non-profit dedicated to conserving biodiversity, has handed back over 400,000 hectares (one million acres) of land it conserved to the Chilean government, making it the largest conservation donation ever from a private entity to a country. With this effort and over 3.6 million hectares (9 million acres) of federal land from Chile, the addition expands national parklands in Chile by 38.5%. In 2018, Chilean President Michelle Bachelet officially declared the national park system expansion, which is roughly the size of Switzerland and will protect large areas of Chile’s rainforests, grasslands, and other terrain. These protected areas will also promote long-term conservation of biodiversity of species native to South America and will bring economic opportunities to the nearby communities. We made grants to TC for land conservation and park infrastructure, and served as a strategic advisor on financing for the new parks. Project period: 2006-2018.
Climate Policy Initiatives
Carbon Dioxide Removal Initiative
In virtually all realistic scenarios, reductions in global greenhouse-gas emissions over the next several decades will not be nearly sufficient to limit global warming to safe levels. Consequently, emission-reduction efforts must be supplemented by activities to remove carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere and store it safely and permanently. The scale of this required removal is immense—as much as 25% of today’s global emissions annually by 2050, and double that level by 2100. All available techniques, both technological and natural, are needed. This includes direct air capture; technologies that enhance the carbon absorption of earth systems such as oceans, plants and minerals; and natural techniques such as reforestation and changes in agricultural practices. Because carbon dioxide removal is a classic “public good,” this will not happen at the needed scale without substantial government support.
ACI’s objective is for the U.S. government to put in place a sufficiently robust set of policies and programs to ensure that carbon dioxide removal (CDR) has a reasonable chance of closing the gap between actual and desired net emission levels in the U.S. by the middle of this century. These policies and programs must include RD&D spending, economic incentives, and regulatory measures. Our initiative was launched in 2017 and began with community education, policy analysis and program design. In recent years we have been deeply involved in policymaker education across the range of needed CDR policies, including those enacted in the Energy Act of 2020, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law of 2021, and the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.
Geothermal Power Initiative
Decarbonizing the electric power sector is at the core of any strategy to decarbonize the U.S. economy. Wind and solar power are low in cost and will therefore play a large role, but they also face critical challenges to achieving the needed scale, due to their intermittency, increasing social pushback, political opposition, and dependence on rare materials for batteries. Next-generation geothermal power, made possible by new drilling techniques, is potentially superior on all of these dimensions, although currently higher in cost. Uniquely among non-CO2-emitting power sources, it provides firm and dispatchable power (so deals directly with the intermittency of other non-emitting power sources); its small physical footprint should minimize NIMBY resistance; it presents the possibility of broad support across the political spectrum; and it does not rely on rare materials. Policies are needed to prove out the technologies, bring down the cost, and realize the scale potential of geothermal. All the other major low-carbon energy technologies, including wind, solar, nuclear, hydrogen, and carbon capture, have received substantial policy support, yet geothermal has received virtually none. This presents a compelling opportunity for a coalition-building and advocacy effort to gain comparable support. We started such an effort in 2023.
Carbon Pricing Initiative
From 2014 to 2021 we conducted a carbon pricing initiative, which sought the adoption of an economy-wide, market-based approach to address the challenge of climate change and advance a clean-energy economy. Central to that objective was supporting policies that can boost the economy, job creation and innovation while cutting pollution. Goals for the program were to (1) develop policy proposals based on the best research and analysis and (2) nurture a national conversation about economically sound approaches.
Conservation Finance
Expanding and Financing the Park System in Chilean Patagonia. Tompkins Conservation (TC), a non-profit dedicated to conserving biodiversity, has handed back over 400,000 hectares (one million acres) of land conserved to the Chilean government, making it the largest conservation donation ever from a private entity to a country. With this effort and over 3.6 million hectares (9 million acres) of federal land from Chile, the addition expands national parklands in Chile by 38.5 percent—which includes the Tompkins’ properties, Pumalín and Patagonia Parks, the expansion of two existing parks, Hornopirén and Corcovado, and one national reserve, Alacalufes. In 2018, Chilean President Michelle Bachelet officially declared the national park system expansion, which is roughly the size of Switzerland and will protect large areas of Chile’s rainforests, grasslands, and other terrain. These protected areas will also promote the long-term conservation of the biodiversity of species native to South America and will bring economic opportunities to the nearby communities. Linden Trust for Conservation made grants to TC, or its predecessors, for land conservation and park infrastructure and is a strategic advisor on financing for the new parks. LTC has been involved with and supported TC since 2006.
ARPA for Life. The Amazon basin is a landscape of global importance. It covers more than 670 million hectares (1.6 billion acres), an area about two-thirds the size of the U.S., and spans nine countries; Brazil accounts for 60%. It is home to half of the world’s remaining tropical forests, one-fifth of Earth’s available fresh water, and approximately one in ten known species on Earth. Furthermore, more than 30 million people, including 350 indigenous and ethnic groups, live in and depend on the Amazon. Unfortunately, about 20% of the Amazon forest has already been lost, and the destruction continues due to unsustainable expansion of agriculture and cattle ranching, construction of roads and dams, and extractive activities. In 1998, Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso pledged to protect 10% of the Brazilian Amazon. The lasting result of that declaration is the Amazon Region Protected Areas (ARPA) program, whose goal is to secure long-term protection for an ecologically representative sample of the biodiversity of the Brazilian Amazon in well-managed protected areas. ARPA now seeks to protect 15% of the Brazilian Amazon, or 60 million hectares (150 million acres)—an area equivalent to three times the size of the entire U.S. national parks system. ARPA has made major strides toward that goal: to date, it has protected 32.5 million hectares (80 million acres). This includes the massive creation of new protected areas: new creations in ARPA’s Phase 1 alone (2003-2009) account for approximately 27% of all protected areas created globally in the same period. Yet, ARPA is incomplete. The remaining challenge is to complete the network and, crucially, to secure all the financial and institutional resources needed to protect it. The “ARPA for Life” project, which closed in 2014, mobilized, in a single deal, all the financial and other commitments needed to protect ARPA’s 60 million hectares permanently. The deal included commitments by donors to place $215 million into a new trust fund, the ARPA Transition Fund, and commitments by the Brazilian government to expand and strengthen the protected areas and gradually increase its own funding of the network. The Transition Fund supplements the government’s funding in diminishing amounts over 25 years, as and if the government increases its funding and continues to expand and protect the areas. The purpose of this deal is to assist and motivate the Brazilian government to strengthen and take full financial ownership of ARPA. The 60-million-hectare size of ARPA makes “ARPA for Life” the single largest land conservation deal in history. Project period: 2011–2014. See press coverage.
Forever Costa Rica. Many countries’ natural heritages suffer not only because insufficient areas have been designated as protected from development but also because there are insufficient funds to manage those areas that are protected. Costa Rica has been a world leader in assigning national parks or other protected status to approximately 25% of its territory. This land, totaling 1.3 million hectares (3.2 million acres), is believed to harbor as much as 4% of the world’s biodiversity—roughly equivalent to all the species combined in the United States and Canada. However, this system has lacked funding structures to ensure that it will be well-managed in perpetuity. In addition, the country’s current marine protected areas have been inadequate to sustain its collapsing fisheries and protect its extraordinary diversity of marine life. With the Forever Costa Rica project, whose implementation began in 2010, Costa Rica now intends to double its marine protected areas at least and dramatically improve the management of both its marine and terrestrial protected-area systems. Critically, it is doing this on the basis of sustainable financing secured by the project. This includes increased government expenditures and $57 million in new funding from external private, bilateral, and multilateral donors, managed by a newly created, independent, special-purpose trust fund. When the project is fully implemented, it will make Costa Rica the first developing nation to achieve all of the protected-area goals of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity. It will thereby position it to serve as a model for others. LTC conceived and launched this project in 2007 in conjunction with then-President Arias of Costa Rica, recruited our partners, and led the management of the project through its closing in 2010. Implementation is being led by a newly created trust, the Forever Costa Rica Association, in partnership with the government of Costa Rica. Project period: 2007–2014. For more information on Forever Costa Rica, see the Executive Summary or the full Project Report.
Restoration of the Great Plains. The objective of this initiative is to partially restore significant features of the American Great Plains, including the ecological restoration of the bison. In order to accomplish this, we supported two major projects. The Northern Great Plains program of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) seeks to restore and conserve one of the most important grassland ecosystems on Earth and the wildlife that call it home. We supported their goal to establish five herds of at least 1,000 bison each in the region by the year 2025. WWF works with tribal wildlife departments to align their bison programs with their community’s desires, build management capacity, and strengthen the economic sustainability of their programs. Additionally, we supported the program at the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) toward the fulfillment of the Vermejo Vision for bison. The Vision seeks the ecological recovery of North American bison, which will occur when multiple large herds move freely across extensive landscapes within all major habitats of their historic range. WCS advances collective stewardship through engagement with government, tribal, and academic partners and was instrumental in securing the 2016 recognition of the bison as a U.S. National Mammal. Project period: 2006–2020.
The Great Bear Rainforest is the world’s largest intact landscape of pristine coastal temperate rainforest. It extends along the Pacific coast of British Columbia to the border with Alaska. It is home to lush vegetation and rare animals, including thousand-year-old giant cedars, the spirit bear, eagles, and wild salmon. The GBRF is the result of collaboration between the Province of British Columbia, the Canadian government, the private sector, and First Nations, as well as a partnership of non-profit organizations. This collective effort established over two million hectares (4.9 million acres) of protected forests and used innovative financial planning to devote C$120 million to environmental and economic development projects. The projects are being carried out by First Nations and forest companies operating under ecosystem-based management. Project period: 2004–2007.
Tierra del Fuego. Karukinka is the name for a reserve established in Chilean Tierra del Fuego by the Wildlife Conservation Society in 2004, based on a land gift and financial support from Goldman Sachs. It is an ecologically distinct mixed ecosystem of pristine austral forests, grasslands, and massive bogs encompassing mountains, valley bottoms, and flatlands, totaling 0.3 million hectares (0.7 million acres). Project period: 2004–2005.
ARPA for Life (Brazil). The Amazon basin is a landscape of global importance. It covers more than 670 million hectares (1.6 billion acres), an area about two-thirds the size of the U.S., and spans nine countries; Brazil accounts for 60%. It is home to half of the world’s remaining tropical forests, one-fifth of Earth’s available fresh water, and approximately one in ten known species on Earth. Furthermore, more than 30 million people, including 350 indigenous and ethnic groups, live in and depend on the Amazon. Unfortunately, about 20% of the Amazon forest has already been lost, and the destruction continues, due to unsustainable expansion of agriculture and cattle ranching, construction of roads and dams, and extractive activities. In 1998, Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso pledged to protect 10% of the Brazilian Amazon. The lasting result of that declaration is the Amazon Region Protected Areas (ARPA) program, whose goal is to secure long-term protection for an ecologically representative sample of the biodiversity of the Brazilian Amazon in well-managed protected areas. ARPA now seeks to protect 15% of the Brazilian Amazon, or 60 million hectares (150 million acres) – an area equivalent to three times the size of the entire U.S. national-parks system. ARPA has made major strides toward that goal, yet it is incomplete. The remaining challenge is to complete the network and, crucially, to secure all the financial and institutional resources needed to protect it. The “ARPA for Life” project, which closed in 2014, mobilized, in a single deal, all the financial and other commitments needed to permanently protect ARPA’s 60 million hectares. The deal included commitments by donors to place $215 million into a new trust fund, the ARPA Transition Fund, and commitments by the Brazilian government to expand and strengthen the protected areas and to gradually increase its own funding of the network. The Transition Fund supplements the government’s funding, in diminishing amounts over 25 years, as and if the government increases its funding and continues to expand and protect the areas. The purpose of this deal is to assist and motivate the Brazilian government to strengthen and take full financial ownership of ARPA. The 60 million hectare size of ARPA makes “ARPA for Life” the single largest land conservation deal in history. Linden Trust for Conservation partnered with the World Wildlife Fund and the Brazilian government to design and execute the deal. Project period: 2011-2014.
Forever Costa Rica. Many countries’ natural heritages suffer not only because insufficient areas have been designated as protected from development, but also because there are insufficient funds to manage those areas that are protected. Costa Rica has been a world leader in assigning national-park or other protected status to approximately 25% of its territory. This land, totaling 1.3 million hectares (3.2 million acres), is believed to harbor as much as 4% of the world’s biodiversity — roughly equivalent to all the species in the United States and Canada combined. However, this system has lacked funding structures to ensure that it will be well-managed in perpetuity. In addition, the country’s current marine protected areas have been inadequate to sustain its collapsing fisheries and protect its extraordinary diversity of marine life. With the Forever Costa Rica project, whose implementation began in 2010, Costa Rica intends to at least double its marine protected areas and dramatically improve management of both its marine and terrestrial protected-area systems. Critically, it is doing this on the basis of sustainable financing secured by the project. This includes increased government expenditures and $57 million in new funding from external private, bilateral and multilateral donors, managed by a newly created, independent, special-purpose trust fund. When the project is fully implemented, it will make Costa Rica the first developing nation to achieve all of the protected-area goals of the United Nations’ Convention on Biological Diversity and will thereby position it to serve as a model for others. Linden Trust for Conservation conceived and launched this project in 2007 in conjunction with then-President Arias of Costa Rica, recruited our partners, and led the management of the project through its closing in 2010. Implementation is being led by a newly-created trust, the Forever Costa Rica Association, in partnership with the government of Costa Rica. Project period: 2007-2014.
Expanding and Financing the Park System in Chilean Patagonia. Tompkins Conservation (TC), a non-profit dedicated to conserving biodiversity, has handed back over 400,000 hectares (one million acres) of land it conserved to the Chilean government, making it the largest conservation donation ever from a private entity to a country. With this effort and over 3.6 million hectares (9 million acres) of federal land from Chile, the addition expands national parklands in Chile by 38.5%. In 2018, Chilean President Michelle Bachelet officially declared the national park system expansion, which is roughly the size of Switzerland and will protect large areas of Chile’s rainforests, grasslands, and other terrain. These protected areas will also promote long-term conservation of biodiversity of species native to South America and will bring economic opportunities to the nearby communities. We made grants to TC for land conservation and park infrastructure, and served as a strategic advisor on financing for the new parks. Project period: 2006-2018.