Business Model
THE CHALLENGE
Historically, the natural resources of this landscape supported significant populations of wildlife which, in turn, created a variety of employment opportunities, tourism and safari activities. The economic and political crises over the past two decades have led to a decrease in tourism, rampant poaching, and an unsustainable increase in human reliance of the natural resources.
Current revenue is not adequate to offset the cost of the requirements to mitigate environmental degradation without substantial investment to fund technologically innovative models. In the absence of sufficient active protection and sustainable economic alternatives for communities, the land will be cleared for unsustainable land-use practices, the wildlife poaching will reduce the current decimated populations further, combined with unsustainable hunting quotas, will eliminate any tourism or biodiversity viability.
our objectives
The Objectives of the Business
- Implement activities and voluntary actions for the preservation, conservation and sustainable use activities that create improvement to human life and do not have a negative effect on the populations within the landscape.
- Ensure that the preservation, rehabilitation, conservation, and sustainable use activities avoid environmental loss and are additional to current activities.
- Confirm that governance is adhered to from local by-laws to self-governance by the communities and authorities, through transitional transfer of ownership, stewardship and accountability.
- Offer bespoke CSR opportunities.
- Collect accurate data for the quantification to show net gains from management activities where their objectives focus on conservation, ecosystem restoration, social upliftment and sustainable use of environmental assets.
- Independent, confirmed and qualified results from all sectors, referenced against the baseline achieved through management activities.
- Provide realistic investor returns, via transparent accounting and tangible results.
- Direct investor access and stewardship of the model.
- Generate Carbon Credits for resale
Streamlined Funding for Sustainable Future
Past efforts to improve funding for global environmental conservation have focused on increasing funding volume and have been largely mechanism-agnostic. This is despite clear evidence from the philanthropic sector and implementors where transfer mechanisms play a critical role in determining the value and availability of funds. Because of this role, non-optimized transfer mechanisms have the potential to create negative downstream impacts on conservation outcomes—either directly, by preventing access to funding in the right amounts at the right times; or indirectly, by capturing value in high transaction costs and unnecessary bureaucracy.
investment & Philanthropy
Building Value, Not Commodities: A New Approach to Conservation Finance
The growth of the conservation finance market is opening the way for banks to pool risk across geographies and asset types, yet there is a danger that the experience of the donation market will repeat itself in natural capital markets as market-based mechanisms fail to design appropriate mechanisms in the rush to find a “pipeline” of carbon, community, and biodiversity projects. We have co-designed and implemented a model that will ensure the most value is placed downstream of natural capital markets, while remaining efficient and providing appropriate returns.
focus ecosystem
Zambezi basin and Zambezi Valley.
The major ecosystems include Combretum, Brachystegia and Miombo woodland. Wildlife includes elephants, lions, impalas, hippos, buffalo, leopard, and crocodiles, along with a wide variety of birds and insects, including numerous IUCN red listed species. The landscape or its immediate surrounds are home to nearly 1 million people, the majority living below the acceptable human rights baseline figure of acceptable income.
our team
Ground Management
Management companies (MC) are present within each area via their senior management (SM) teams. SM have numerous on-the-ground management (OGM) teams that generally include an area manager with a complement of field officers to assist. All team members will be recruited locally. MC will have a strong influence on the selection of team leaders, to ensure their reliability. There is one SM team per RDC or Safari area, where they have a steady office/camp that will also serve as a contact point for the local population.