Marrying Conservation and Business
William Ginn’s new book, Investing in Nature, treats the reader to a collection of case studies that illustrate how business and conservation interests
can collaboratively and creatively achieve profitable results and ecological gains simultaneously.
Ginn hops around the globe providing a dizzying accounting of complex legal, business and conservation transactions on large-scale projects. With each case he concisely creates the context for high stakes projects that draws the
reader into the drama of business deals where the outcomes may result in compromised ecology or long term protection of vast landscapes.
This book is has three components interwoven
in several chapters. The first is an excellent reference that includes organizations and contacts for practitioners wishing to learn more about investment banking and conservation opportunities, emerging markets where nature’s capital leverages further investment in conservation, and various private and public incentives for expanding the scope of conservation projects.
The second piece is practical, learned advice on structuring and completing projects with broad conservation goals. The third, and by far the most interesting, is the individual stories surrounding the deals and projects that Investing in Nature contains to highlight the opportunities and pitfalls of marrying conservation and business.
It is here that the book excels on one hand but leaves the reader wanting to know more. The stories of people putting together extraordinary business transactions against steep odds are most compelling yet tantalizingly thin. What did the author leave on the cutting room floor? Ginn is not above playing to our culture’s desire for happy conclusions as he reveals positive results rising from seemingly insurmountable business problems and ecological dilemmas. The difference is they are not fabricated but real.
Investing in Nature provokes us all to examine how conservation and business leaders, on a smaller scale than Ginn describes, might stretch their traditional thinking and practices to find opportunities of mutual benefit.
Henry Nichols is executive director of The Friends of the Royal River, a regional land trust based in Yarmouth, Maine.