South Star: Chile and the Future of Conservation Finance

Astronomers regard Chile’s Atacama Desert as one of the world’s finest sites for stargazing. Credit: BABAK TAFRESHI/National On September 27 to 29, 2016, the International might play in addressing climate change; and, Geographic Creative Land Conservation Network (ILCN), a project of particularly, Chile’s emerging global leadership in the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, hosted the land conservation. “Workshop on Emerging Innovations in Conserva- The workshop organizers greatly appreciate tion Finance” at Las Majadas de Pirque, near Santi- the productive contributions of all participants, as ago, Chile. The workshop drew 63 participants from well as the collaboration of conference partners: eight counties, who came together to discuss tools the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American and concepts that are strengthening conservation Studies at Harvard University; Fundación Robles finance in the Western Hemisphere and beyond. de Cantillana; the Harvard Forest, Harvard Univer- The policies, practices, and case studies sity; Las Majadas de Pirque; Qué Pasa; and discussed at the workshop represented a broad Templado. The organizers also invite readers to spectrum of innovative financing mechanisms to access the official workshop proceedings and to address challenges posed by development and learn more about the ILCN, which is connecting climate change. Topics included value capture in people and organizations around the world that Latin America; the restructuring of insurance are accelerating voluntary private and civic sector markets to make cities more resilient and action to protect and steward land and water SOUTH financially sustainable in the face of intensified resources, at www.landconservationnetwork.org. storm events; financial incentives for conserva- Below follows renowned author Tony Hiss’s tion as written into Chilean and U.S. law; compen- experience at the workshop and observations of satory mitigation; conservation finance-oriented Chile’s stunning natural resources and inspiring networks; the role of civil society and conserva- conservation efforts. tion finance in carrying out the 2015 Paris Climate STAR Agreement; the potential role that capital markets — Emily Myron, Project Manager, ILCN By Tony Hiss FOR NORTH AMERICAN CONSERVATIONISTS, EVEN A Given how fast the biosphere is warming WHIRLWIND VISIT TO CHILE CAN FEEL LIKE ENCOUR- and changing, governments alone can’t AGEMENT FROM THE FUTURE—an encounter with a afford the trillions of dollars needed to strong beam of light shining northward. That’s thanks to the nature of the place, a showcase of secure and then care for the places that spectacular landscapes neatly arranged in a tall, have to be held onto for all time. tight stack along the country’s narrow ribbon of land between the Pacific Ocean and the Andes Mountains. Equally it has to do with the people in already creating a sort of hemispheric force field that country and what groups and individuals of conservation concern. As a result, the partner- have been doing during five-and-a-half centuries ship’s co-anchor, Chile, a country whose name to protect these indispensable landscapes. according to one derivation means “ends of the At a meeting I got to attend last fall at Las earth,” feels like a close colleague though it Majadas de Pirque, a kind of marzipan palace- remains more than 10 hours away from New York CHILE AND THE FUTURE turned-conference center outside Santiago, it City on a plane. became clear that a North and South American Building on this affinity, the meeting—called OF CONSERVATION FINANCE partnership, which got its start during several the “Workshop on Emerging Innovations in decades of quiet collaborations among conser- Conservation Finance” and hosted by the Lincoln vationists in the United States and Chile, is Institute’s International Land Conservation 8 LAND LINES WINTER 2017 9 Network (ILCN)—gathered dozens of conserva- Chile’s Special Nature night skies that will make it the first “starlight tionists, officials, and investors from both reserve” in the Western Hemisphere. Within a countries, with further representation from Of course, not every visitor gets to stay in such an year, this professional astronomer’s paradise will around the Western Hemisphere, to think elegant setting as Las Majadas, but it’s easy for be home to 70 percent of the world’s great through an increasingly urgent challenge: Given North Americans to feel at home in Chile—and telescopes: an ELT (Extremely Large Telescope) how fast the biosphere is warming and changing, not just because of the abundance of bookstores the size of a football stadium now under con- governments alone can’t afford the trillions of in Santiago or the gleaming high-rises in the city’s struction will supplement an existing VLT (Very dollars needed to secure and then care for the financial center, nicknamed “Sanhattan.” The Large Telescope), amid talk of an OWL (an places that have to be held onto for all time to countryside’s succession of landscapes and Overwhelmingly Large Telescope) that could save biodiversity. climates eerily echo those along our own Pacific someday, according to the European Southern Despite the severity of the problem, it’s a coast west of the Sierras—though rather than Observatory, “revolutionize our perception of the huge jump forward when two countries that being mirror images of each other, the relation- universe as much as Galileo’s telescope did.” strongly support conservation—and each with so ship between the two countries is more like the In the more southerly Valdivian temperate much worthy of conserving—team up to find new upside-down reflection you’d see if you were rainforest region, foggy and chilly and with dense Araucaria araucana—the national tree of Chile, commonly known as the solutions. “What good timing,” Hari Balasubrama- standing on the edge of a lake: with deserts in understories of ferns and bamboos (our “cold monkey puzzle—is an ancient species often described as a living fossil for its close resemblance to its prehistoric ancestors. Credit: GERRY ELLIS/ MINDEN nian, a Canadian consultant who thinks about the the north, Patagonian glaciers and fjords far in jungle,” as Pablo Neruda, the Nobel Prize- PICTURES/National Geographic Creative business value of conservation, said of the the south, and in between a sunny Mediterranean winning Chilean poet, called it, “fragrant, silent, three-day conference. “Conservationists have area, like that of central and southern California, tangled”), many of the trees are among the always been in the perpetuity business. And now and a foggy temperate rainforest region, like in world’s most ancient. “Today,” said one awed we need to work even harder at financing and Oregon or Washington. Our fall is their spring. And visitor (Ken Wilcox, author of Chile’s Native “ Today, the opportunity to walk for days managing protected lands so they will last.” Chile is as long as the distance from New York to Forests: A Conservation Legacy), “the opportunity among living things as old as the Sphinx Laura Johnson, director of the ILCN, con- San Francisco, but its western and eastern to walk for days among living things as old as the is possible only in Chile.” curred: “The idea that we can develop new tools boundaries—the Pacific and the ridge line of the Sphinx is possible only in Chile.” for financing big visions for conservation is still Andes—are always closer than the distance The monarch of these cathedral-like forests relatively recent. Can we find the resources between Manhattan and Albany, New York. of evergreens—siempreverdes, in Spanish—is needed to meet the daunting challenge of Yet Chile’s “sister landscapes” can still be the alerce, a shaggier, slightly shorter but much outsized and stunning—peaks, glaciers, islands, creating lasting land and water conservation? humbling to North Americans: Chile doesn’t just longer-lived cousin of the North American giant fjords, forests. The landscapes look retouched in The conference was intended to help answer have deserts, it has the world’s driest desert— sequoia. Even more striking is the 260-foot-tall photographs and leave even the best writers that question.” the Atacama, known as Mars on Earth, with clear monkey puzzle tree, which like the alerce towers gasping for adequate descriptions. The iconic logo over the surrounding forest canopy, where its of the Patagonia clothing line—which I had once dead-straight, spindly trunk is topped by an supposed to be a fanciful, Shangri-La concoction intricately snarled crown of thickly overlapping of jagged, imaginary peaks silhouetted against Chile’s Valdivian rainforest is branches entirely covered with sharp, prickly bands of unlikely-looking orange and purple home to some of the most leaves. Think of an umbrella with too many ribs horizontal clouds—is actually a rather oversim- ancient trees on earth, including the alerce, which can blown inside out by a thunderstorm. “It would plified, understated, subdued sketch. In fact, the live for 3,600 years. Credit: puzzle a monkey to climb that,” said Victorian mountains, clouds, and light are all quite real. And Kike Calvo/National lawyer Charles Austin—though it might be more the graphic doesn’t begin to convey the 5,000- Geographic/Getty Images accurate to call it a dinosaur puzzle tree since square mile Southern Patagonian Ice Cap right there are no monkeys in Chile, and the tree’s next to the ridgeline (an ice cap is to a glacier as a thorny leaves, unchanged over eons, evolved to paragraph is to a word), or what one mountaineer, repel the giant herbivore reptiles that roamed Gregory Crouch, author of Enduring Patagonia, Gondwana, the ancient southern supercontinent calls “the wind, the gusting wind, the ceaseless, that began to break up 180 million years ago. ceaseless wind.” It’s a landscape still so unknown Then there’s Patagonia.

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