Pay for Success is an exciting new way to pay for measurable environmental outcomes. Jurisdictions and stakeholders can buy environmental services just like buying goods. This has the potential to generate faster and cheaper delivery of environmental services such as clean water and stream restoration than status quo approaches. Faced with clunky and outdated environmental legislation that favors process over innovation, we work to uncover the best Pay for Success stories and iterate on the model to make it work for conservation in more places with better outcomes.

While private conservation finance has played a secondary role over the last 20 years in delivering more than $4.2 billion in capital compared to tens of billions in public spending, private finance has significant room to grow over the next decade. It’s also not just a funding source. Approaches through which private capital are deployed can dramatically improve the cost-effectiveness of public funding, can support innovation to a greater degree than public funds, and facilitate greater lending capacity so that restoration happens much faster. Each of these secondary strengths of private capital increase the long-term benefits of conservation action. Over the next 20 years, private, profit-seeking capital is likely to continue to revolutionize the speed and types of conservation progress we can achieve, from climate resilience and energy transformation to ecological restoration.

Environmental markets make it possible to reduce and compensate for impacts to water quality, biodiversity and threatened species. Nutrient trading mitigates water quality impacts through buying credits from entities that are actively restoring waterways and reducing nutrient impacts. Major environmental policies such as the Clean Water Act and Endangered Species Act already drive much of our nation’s environmental markets, and drive us toward Net Zero Mitigation.

The benefits of federal land acquisition and conservation for the public good are increasingly obvious - air and water quality, climate change mitigation, wildlife habitat, and human health and recreation to name a few - just as development pressures on America’s lands grow.