Katherine will speak about voluntary carbon markets, both what they are and how they work with her recent research on market trends, quantifying prices and volumes transacted in the marketplace, and evolving standards.

Voluntary Carbon Markets 101: What they are and how they work

Paul Hunt, Environmental Manager for the Portland Water District, Thom Kyker-Snowman, Environmental Analyst for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and Fred Gliesing, Senior Forester for the City of New York, discuss the management and protection of urban water supply systems.

Land Use, Forests and Urbanization: The Future of Drinking Water Supplies in New England and New York

Watershed

Paul Barten, Associate Professor of Forest Resources at the University of Massachusetts, and co-author of Land Use Effects on Streamflow and Water Quality in the Northeastern United States, discusses the complex world of planning for watersheds and proposes a framework for answering the needs of the environment and the community.

Effects of Watershed Science and Management on Public and Ecosystem Health

Kate Hamilton, Carbon Project Manager at Ecosystem Marketplace, and Edwin Aalders, Director of the International Emissions Trading Association, discuss the development of forest carbon credit standards and their role in emerging compliance markets.  The speakers detail the specific methods by which forest carbon credits are demonstrated and measured.

Lessons from the Voluntary Forest Carbon Markets - How Might they Apply to the Emerging Compliance Markets

Nick Robins, director of HSBC’s Climate Change Centre of Excellence, and Cary Krosinsky, Vice President of Trucost, present the case for long-term, sustainable, socially responsible investing (SRI).  They discuss the metrics SRI funds use to make investment decisions and how a marketplace changed by recession and stimulus will influence those decisions in the future.

After the Crunch: The Future of Sustainable Investing and Carbon Finance

Deborah Spalding, Managing Partner with Working Lands Investment Partners, LLC, providing an introduction to land investing and carbon markets from an investor’s perspective.  Ms. Spalding discuss traditional and emerging markets for carbon and notes the differences between voluntary and compliance-based schemes.  Finally, she notes the challenges faced by land investors and credits buyers, and ties these concepts together through a sample investment project.

Carbon, Forests and Lands: An Investor's Primer

Laurie Wayburn, President of Pacific Forest Trust, describes the legal system that currently governs U.S. forests and proposes a regulatory method for managing public and private forests towards a "no net loss" policy.  Ms. Wayburn addresses the relationship between federal and state actions as well as the difficulties in collecting and interpreting data on forest carbon.  She also notes the limits of a project-oriented voluntary system as opposed to a sector-wide approach.

U.S. Forest Carbon Policy - State and Federal

Frank Merry, Fellow at the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, traces the history of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon and addresses the need to make the industry more sustainable and just through new technologies and regulations.  Mr. Merry  describes new methods to promote proper forest management and deter illegal logging.

Economic and Business Drivers of Tropical Deforestation Under Large Standing Forests

Phil Cottle, managing director of ForestRe, discusses the emerging market for insurance in forestry investing and the risks encountered by forest owners and managers.  He explains the need for a "complete presentation of risk" in financial decision making about forest and carbon investments, with an emphasis on how insurers can monitor the situation on the ground.

Bringing Security to Forestry Investors Worldwide: A View from ForestRe

Mark Tercek, President of the Nature Conservancy, discusses the future of forest carbon trading and strategies for engaging the private market in carbon finance.  Forests are an important mechanism for sequestering carbon and protecting the environment, yet reforestation and aforestation projects have been left of some credit markets.  Mr. Tercek discusses both the players in these new markets and their tools.

Protecting Forests and Lands through Environmental Markets and Finance - A View from the Nature Conservancy

Yale Center for Business and the Environment

Mark Ashton, Morris K. Jessup Professor of Silviculture and Forest Ecology and Director of the School Forests, Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, provides a historical overview of forest management and land use.  Professor Ashton discusses the changing uses of forests and how cycles of industrialization, degradation, rehabilitation and sustainability are affected by changing capitalization values.  He also traces the beginnings of scientific forestry in Europe and America, and notes the strategies that forest managers and policymakers may use in the future.

People, Forests and Land Use: A History of Resource Exploitation, Conservation, and Sustainable Management

Shawn Burns, President and CEO of Carbon Credit Corp. and Ted Venners, Chairman of the Board of C-Lock Technology and Founder of Evergreen Energy Inc., discuss C-Lock’s capacity to quantify, measure, record and model soil organic matter on farms.  These services allow farmers to extract quality carbon offsets earned through changing agricultural practices.

American Farmers and the Emerging Markets for Carbon Offsets in the U.S. and Canada

Investing in Clean Energy and Climate Change: A Private Equity Panel

Martin Whittaker, Director of Environmental Finance Strategies with Mission Point Capital, Andy Ertel, CEO of Evolution Markets, Benjamin Block, Senior Analyst for Ardsley Partners Renewable Energy Strategy, Paul Ezekiel, Global Head of Carbon Trading for Credit Suisse,  and Brad Gentry (Moderator), Director of the Center for Business and the Environment at Yale, discuss the pros of investing in climate change and how their respective companies invest in ways to make the environment better.

Investing in Climate Change: A Panel on Hedge Funds

Professors Goetzmann and Rouwenhorst give a classic presentation on the 4,000 year history of financial innovation as the first part of the carbon finance speaker series.

The History of Financial Innovation

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