Commercialising Conservation
The Global Conservation Standard (GCS) was created initially to help in the battle against deforestation. It had a secondary role to help rural communities benefit from the investment provided by the public, corporations and Governments, based on CCF’s energy crops and developing lumber crop operations, through scaled commercial implementation.
This in turn had the added benefits of reducing commodity pressure on the forests. The GCS has evolved considerably into a conservation-based standard and a working methodology which is logical, transparent, and practicable but importantly allows the monetisation of conservation assets quickly and which is globally implementable.
The GCS is a framework for commercial conservation area enhancement with baseline monitoring coupled with satellite and fly-over imagery. This creates an audit basis from which not only the conservation asset can be monitored but other credits can be generated through pro-active enhancements which are normally in the best interests of the conservation area and surrounding communities and businesses. Better use of fertilisers for instance can reduce nitrate and phosphate levels in soils which creates nutrient credits. This in turn increases yields and revenue while reducing fertiliser run off (leaching) into the watershed (water credits) which again reduces the impact within the conservation areas.
This in turn increases yields and revenue while reducing fertiliser run off (leaching) into the watershed (water credits) which again reduces the impact within the conservation areas.
