Forest Trends

Beginning in 1996, a small group of leaders from forest industry, donors, and environmental groups began to meet to consider the array of challenges facing forest conservation and began to identify common ground. This group recognized the respective contributions and limits of their own institutions and decided to create a new organization - Forest Trends - to expand this work of bridging traditional divides and promoting market-based approaches to forest conservation.

In 1998, the group agreed on an organizational model for the new organization. Forest Trends would be a small, nimble, and responsive non-profit organization with three principal roles: convening market players to advance market transformations, generating and disseminating critical information to market players, and facilitating deals between different critical links in the value chains of new forestry. The original group of participants was expanded to include additional representatives from industry, finance, and community conservation, and this enlarged group became the original Board of Directors. The Board was expanded in late 1999 to include representation from other major forest areas besides the United States, including Russia, Brazil, Malaysia, and Canada.

Business and Biodiversity Offsets Program

BBOP is an international partnership of some 40 leading conservation organizations, companies, governments, and financial institutions developing, testing and implementing best practices on biodiversity offsets. Forest Trends launched BBOP in November 2004, and serves as its Secretariat with the Wildlife Conservation Society.

Together, the BBOP partners are designing and implementing biodiversity offsets in a range of industry sectors, countries and ecosystems, and sharing the results and practical guidance in the form of a number of publications. These include a set of principles, offset design and implementation handbooks, and case studies. BBOP also supports governments developing policy related to biodiversity offsets, conservation banking and land-use and landscape level planning. The BBOP closed in December 2018.

Communities & Markets

The Communities & Markets program seeks to reduce poverty, improve livelihoods and conserve natural resources by promoting community participation in market-based conservation mechanisms. The program links communities to environmental markets by promoting the awareness and capacity for communities to participate in and benefit from payments and compensation schemes that value their stewardship role of ecosystem services. Working with other Forest Trends programs and partner organizations, it provides information, capacity building, and technical assistance for communities around the world.

Ecosystem Marketplace

Ecosystem Marketplace is a global platform for transparent information on ecosystem value and transactions. The website features news, data and analyses on markets and payments for ecosystem services such as water quality, carbon sequestration and biodiversity.

Criticism

Forest Trends has been named a non ordinary NGO by forest activist Chris Lang, who claims that the organisation is more interested in creating investment opportunities and is pushing for the commodification of nature. Further some active employees have tight connection to the World Bank like Michael Jenkins and Ken Newcombe. Further David Brand is head of New Forests which has a poor environmental and social record in forestry projects in Uganda. Therefore, many of its members have conflicts of interests.

Further Lang criticises the Carbon Market report from 2017 "Unlocking Potential", because it fails to mention fossil fuels and claims that carbon markets would combat climate change.