Forest Trends recently released a report assessing that private sector investments in environmental conservation reaches $8.2B and returns of up to 9%.
The numbers indicate that impact investing in conservation is moving from “a niche product to something that resembles an emerging market,” according to the report.
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Forest Trends’ Ecosystem Marketplace and partners — JPMorgan Chase & Co, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the Nature Conservancy and NatureVest, Encourage Capital, Credit Suisse and Cornell University — recently released the 2016 edition of the State of Private Investment in Conservation that assesses and analyzes this growing trend of investments in the environment that yield both financial and environmental returns.
The chief findings are that the market is continuing to grow, and that investors targeting this space want more investment opportunities than they can find. Cumulative investment in conservation reached $8.2 billion through 2015, up 27 percent year over year since 2013. This represents roughly $1.6 billion in annual investments, with a doubling roughly every three years. Most investors reported expected internal rates of return (IRR) in a range of 5 to 9 percent. Notably, nearly a third of investors report IRR expectations above 15 percent.
The 2016 analysis was based on a global survey of 128 fund managers, family offices, investors, banks and non-governmental organizations, the majority of which fund managers and fund-of-fund managers based in the United States and Europe. In-depth interviews were carried out with 31 more representatives from these and other organizations to supplement the data with case study examples, emerging developments and areas of opportunity.
Source: Greenbiz
