RFF is developing an interactive web-based tool to help conservation planners target forest conservation in Mexico—in particular, investments associated with the $29 million US Agency for International Development Mexico Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (MREDD) program.
Targeting MREDD and other conservation investments in Mexico presents an ideal test case for conservation ROI methods: it entails financially significant sums, covers a broad geographic scope (parts of five Mexican states are under consideration for protection), and aims to achieve multiple objectives (carbon sequestration, biodiversity protection, provision of hydrological services, and other social goals).
The Forest Conservation Targeting Tool (FCTT) helps decisionmakers quantify and visualize the kinds of returns they can expect from investments in forests in specific locations. Many factors will ultimately influence these choices, but the tool is designed to empower decisionmakers with usable, intuitive information on how conservation costs, forest loss threats, and multiple conservation outcomes come together to produce conservation “bang for the buck.”
An important feature of the tool is that it takes into account three distinct conservation outcomes: carbon sequestration, biodiversity protection, and measures of water availability and quality. Users can determine the relative importance of the outcomes and gauge the consequences of those judgments for the portfolio of locations that generate the highest ROI for a given budget.
RFF is developing the FCTT for Mexico with support from the Moore Foundation and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) through its SERVIR program, and is extending the model to all of Central America with SERVIR support.
