Conservation Finance As Food System Infrastructure
by Sarah Wentzel-Fisher, Thornburg Foundation
In New Mexico, the health of forests, headwaters, and aquifers determines whether farmers and ranchers can graze, plant, irrigate and harvest. Wildfire, flood and drought cascade from headwaters into broken acequias and lost crops, undermining the economies and traditions of rural communities. We can’t prevent every storm, but we can reduce their long-term impacts through better stewardship — and we must invest in that resilience through conservation finance.
According to the Conservation Finance Network, conservation finance encompasses the full range of tools that fund and sustain ecological outcomes — from grants and philanthropy to market-based mechanisms such as ecosystem payments, water or carbon credits, and blended-capital investments. In essence, it’s about matching the scale of ecological need with capital models that extend beyond grants and one-time appropriations. In New Mexico, conservation finance becomes especially powerful when it links forest restoration, acequia resilience and groundwater recharge into one hydrologic and financial framework. Water is life here, and we are at a moment of reckoning. Shifting how we value, and finance, water stewardship will determine whether agriculture remains viable in the future.
Conservation finance — with its mix of grants, performance contracts, loans, and private investment — is the bridge between today’s fragmented funding landscape and a more resilient future. When public infrastructure tools and private capital converge to fund the entire hydrologic system — from upland forests to aquifers to acequias — we finally have the architecture to sustain New Mexico’s food systems for the century ahead. In this light, conservation finance is not an environmental luxury or a philanthropic gesture. It is the most practical, immediate strategy for safeguarding the state’s agricultural future — and for ensuring that the rivers, wells, and watersheds that feed New Mexico continue to nourish its people and its economy for generations to come.
Read Sarah's full article here - https://greenmoney.com/conservation-finance-as-food-system-infrastructure
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