Standardizing the Return on Investment in Urban and Community Forestry Resources - 2018 Update

This project designs an easily adoptable assessment methodology that informs the investment decisions of the private, public and nonprofit sectors.

A universally accepted accounting framework to holistically measure the benefits and costs of urban and community forest resources
does not exist. This absence is due to a range of factors including the highly fragmented network of organizations managing urban and community resources. EPA, NPS and impact investing models offer examples that are markers on a spectrum of accounting approaches for measuring the benefits and return on investment (public or private dollars). Because each framework blends private and social benefits, each maps to the double bottom line of financial and social outcomes but in combinations that directly respond to the objectives of their respective investors/funders. With design principals that emphasize standardization, replicability and transparency, this project will develop an accounting system with ROI metrics from a common set of data that answers to private, nonprofit and public investors. Uniformity in the data and construction of measures will also support aggregation across local, state and national scales thereby facilitating ‘apple to apple’ comparisons across forestry resources.

Attachments and Links

Click here to download this grant progress report for 2018 as a PDF.