Elden Rosenthal: Innovative ways to save our treasured forests
Problem solvers like Blue Forest are pointing out that private capital (That’s where the money is!) can also contribute to solving problems.
Oregon trial lawyer, 1972-2017. Member, Board of Directors, Southern Poverty Law Center.
Forty years ago, my wife and I bought a small second home on the Deschutes River about a half mile upstream from Sunriver. The deed came with a provision that log rafts could be tied up on the river bank in front of the house. I squawked about that provision to the title company, and they removed the easement. “It’s not a problem,” I was told, because “the prized Ponderosa are all gone.”
As a fisherman I stalk around the streams of Central Oregon. The title company was correct. Rather than Ponderosa forest land, much of this part of the state is covered in lodgepole, tightly packed together. Our prized possession – pristine forests – is slipping through our hands in a violent, fiery fashion.
Since buying our house I have driven across the Santiam Pass between Portland and Central Oregon hundreds of times. None of the trips were sadder than the drive this last October. For over twenty miles along the highway around the Santiam Canyon the massive destruction caused by the August fires is painfully visible: chimneys stand where once there were homes; burnt out vehicles litter the landscape; hundreds of thousands of trees blackened and downed, creek beds exposed. The forest will not recover during my lifetime.
Devastating fires have become so commonplace in the Northwest that it is expected in much of Oregon that August will be the smoke season. The problems of climate change and forest management are so complex and overwhelming that buying an electric car and decommissioning a wood stove will not solve the problem. In Oregon we need to look for solutions on a larger scale.
One startup non-profit in California has an innovative approach. Blue Forest, founded by four young Berkeley business school graduates (one of whom was born and raised in Oregon), matches private capital with much needed forest management. The basic idea is to attract investors to purchase “Forest Resilience Bonds,” and use the attracted capital to jumpstart needed projects that improve forests’ health and benefit watersheds.
Nick Wobbrock, the Oregon co-founder, explained to me that in Oregon there are already-permitted projects to ecologically thin and otherwise improve a million acres of national forests. Though these projects are ready to go from a regulatory standpoint, they need to be realized—currently, they are sitting on the shelf with no obvious path to implementation.
That’s where Blue Forest comes in: by matching municipalities, water districts, and utilities with private investors, funds can be generated to provide the upfront expenses necessary to trigger federal dollars for these already-approved projects. When all is said and done, a win-win-win is created.
First, the projects get completed and the private contractors who do the work get paid.
Second, the municipalities, water districts and utilities benefit by reducing fire danger and improving water quantity and quality.
And, to top it off, private investors make a small but reasonable return.
Blue Forest recently sold Forest Resilience Bonds to arrange a large scale project in the Yuba River Watershed in Northern California, and is in conversation with the Medford Water Commission about a potential project in the Rogue watershed.
Healthy forests mean more than just decreased fire risk and clean water. Healthy forests also make for a healthier planet. The Northwest’s forests sequester more carbon per acre than tropical forests, and contribute directly to abundant fisheries.
Our 28 million acres of forest are Oregon’s treasure, our prized possession. But if the 2020 fire season taught us anything, it is that the risk is real that we could squander this treasure and lose our prize. Everyone in Oregon wants healthy forests: the timber and logging industry, as well as fishermen, hunters, hikers, and Oregonians who simply want grand vistas and clean air.
And, we all know that climate change is threatening our state’s greatest natural resource. We need innovative approaches, tax dollars, as well as the private capital our society has amassed to preserve and maintain our heritage of forested mountains and pristine waterways.
Forest Resilience Bonds offer one such innovative approach – creating win-win-win situations that are hard to come by when it comes to doing public work. I serve on the Board of Directors of the Southern Poverty Law Center. For several years we have been pushing the money managers that husband our endowment to increase the socially responsible share of our investment portfolio.
We have discovered it is not easy to find suitable investments that not only foster an NGO’s values, but that also pay a return. I can only assume that finding meaningful socially responsible investments is also an issue for other NGOs as well as private investors. The University of Oregon, Oregon State University, Reed College, and Oregon Health Sciences University have a combined endowment, as of 2018, totaling $2.175 billion. Innovative financial approaches to funding forest management and watershed health ought to be an attractive idea to these and other Oregon institutions.
Infamous bank robber Willie Sutton was once asked why he robbed banks. “Because,” he replied, “that’s where the money is.” Innovative programs that can solve environmental as well as other societal problems need not be wholly reliant on government funding. Problem solvers like Blue Forest are pointing out that private capital (That’s where the money is!) can also contribute to solving problems.
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