Forest Trends Association

Forest policy, trade and finance: the forest policy, trade and finance initiative was created in the early 2000s when the organization realized that emerging markets for ecosystem services and products were continuing to be undermined by cheap and illegal forest products. Since then, the fptf program has been working to "squeeze out" the profitability and market access of illegally sourced timber and agricultural products. The ultimate aim of the fptf program is to support market transformation away from products sourced illegally from forest areas, developing excellent data and policy analysis in conjunction with stakeholders, and mentoring and convening 'communities of practice' at the intersection of good forest governance, law enforcement, trade controls, secure resource rights, and sustainable resource development. The initiative's theory of change hinges upon a combination of supply and demand side interventions at this intersection of policy, governance, transparency, and sustainable resource production.mekong: preventing deforestations before it happens through stopping illegal deforestation, fighting climate change, creating new strategies in tracing illegal timber and working both with consumers and producers.

Communities initiative: the communities initiative is one of the first initiatives of forest trends. The initial focus was on research and publications to promote communities' forest/land tenure. In 2006 we transitioned to our current approach of working directly with local communities to strengthen their capacity to secure and manage their traditional forest homelands.we support indigenous and other traditional communities to secure their rights, manage and conserve their forests and improve their livelihoods. Focusing on rights, forests, and livelihoods, we link local communities in key geographies to opportunities around evolving policy, finance, and technical assistance. By strengthening local communities' capacity to secure and manage their forests, the communities initiative is also contributing to climate change mitigation, cultural survival, and to the conservation of biodiversity and other ecosystem services.

Ecosystem marketplace: launched as a web-based information platform in 2004, ecosystem marketplace publishes newsletters, breaking news, original feature articles and major reports about market-based approaches to conserving ecosystem services. Beginning in 2007, staff began collecting survey data to inform the first-ever "state of the voluntary carbon markets" report; since then, coverage has expanded to include forest carbon, watershed investments and biodiversity in our signature "state of" market analysis report format. Lately, em has explored new topics of interest to our traditional markets (e.g., the buyers' report), expanded our coverage to new focal topics (e.g., supply change, and the conservation investment survey), and increased our external advising and consulting opportunities (e.g., global alliance for clean cookstoves, forest stewardship council).em believes that transparency is a hallmark of robust markets and that by providing freely-accessible information, we can facilitate transactions (thereby lowering transaction costs) and also catalyze new thinking and spur the development of new markets and the infrastructure that supports them. With em's high quality market intelligence, project developers can better manage and sell ecosystem services; buyers can better understand the markets and their legitimacy; policy makers can learn from past policies to create more enabling environments for markets; and academics can better understand the real-world challenges and trends of payments for ecosystem services.

Catalytic campaign: the forest service accomplishes work under the challenge cost-share authority (department of the interior and related agencies appropriations act of 1992, public law 102-154) for the purpose of cooperatively developing, planning, and implementing projects with our partners that are of mutual interest and benefit and enhance forest service activities. As stated in the original agreement (22-cs-11132420), the forest service seeks to modify its agreement with forest trends to expand strategic communications related to the wildfire crisis strategy, mutually supporting partners' efforts to build enabling conditions that accelerate the implementation of priority on-the groundwork in wcs landscapes.