Conservation Strategy Fund
Encyclopedia
Conservation Strategy Fund (CSF) is an international non-governmental environmental conservation organization based in Sebastopol, CA, with offices in Arcata, CA, and Lagoa Santa, Minas Gerais, Brazil. It focuses on economic issues underlying the conservation of rainforests, oceans, and other ecosystems. CSF has focused on the world's tropical rain belt
Tropical rain belt
The rainfall, and hence the tropical climate is dominated by the tropical rain belt, which oscillates from the northern to the southern tropics over the course of the year, roughly following the solar equator; it is largely a manifestation of the ITCZ...

 in Latin America, Africa, and Asia due to high amounts of biodiversity
Biodiversity
Biodiversity is the degree of variation of life forms within a given ecosystem, biome, or an entire planet. Biodiversity is a measure of the health of ecosystems. Biodiversity is in part a function of climate. In terrestrial habitats, tropical regions are typically rich whereas polar regions...

 in those areas. Founded in 1998 by John Reid (conservationist)
John Reid (conservationist)
- John Reid :John Reid is the founder and president of the Conservation Strategy Fund, a nonprofit international environmental organization in located in Sebastopol, CA. John has worked in conservation since 1991, promoting the use of economics to address conservation challenges...

, CSF has grown to over 20 employees in three offices around the world.

Mission

CSF says its mission is "to teach environmental organizations around the world to use economics and strategic analysis to conserve nature". Since 1999, the group has trained over 1200 people from over 80 countries.

Training

CSF produces economic analysis of projects that could potentially harm the environment as well as people. CSF also conducts training courses in South America, the United States, and elsewhere, including their flagship course "Economic Tools for Conservation" held annually at Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...

 in Palo Alto, CA. These courses educate conservationists in economic fundamentals and practices, so that they can persuasively and accurately present information. Its training courses encompass the basics of economics, cost-benefit analysis
Cost-benefit analysis
Cost–benefit analysis , sometimes called benefit–cost analysis , is a systematic process for calculating and comparing benefits and costs of a project for two purposes: to determine if it is a sound investment , to see how it compares with alternate projects...

, net present value
Net present value
In finance, the net present value or net present worth of a time series of cash flows, both incoming and outgoing, is defined as the sum of the present values of the individual cash flows of the same entity...

, and various other tools in order to help its alumni present real numbers to strengthen parks and protected areas, influence policies, craft sustainable development paths and avert damage from major infrastructure projects such as roads and dams. Among other issues, CSF is concerned with endangered species
Endangered species
An endangered species is a population of organisms which is at risk of becoming extinct because it is either few in numbers, or threatened by changing environmental or predation parameters...

, pollution
Pollution
Pollution is the introduction of contaminants into a natural environment that causes instability, disorder, harm or discomfort to the ecosystem i.e. physical systems or living organisms. Pollution can take the form of chemical substances or energy, such as noise, heat or light...

 and climate change
Climate change
Climate change is a significant and lasting change in the statistical distribution of weather patterns over periods ranging from decades to millions of years. It may be a change in average weather conditions or the distribution of events around that average...

.

Achievements

Some notable achievements include helping to establish 1.5 million acres of protected area in central Brazil, helping local people divert the construction of a road through Volcán Barú National Park in Panama, successfully preventing construction of a dam that would have flooded significant portions of Madidi National Park in Bolivia, and delaying the paving of highway BR-319 in the Brazilian Amazon which, without proper safeguards, could have inflicted harm on the world's largest rainforest.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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