Clarmondial is pleased to announce its support for an academic research initiative on Landscape Endowments, led by Rahul Shah at the Yale School of the Environment under the supervision of Professor Brad Gentry. The collaboration will further develop the Landscape Endowment Concept, a financing architecture designed by Clarmondial to secure the resilience of working landscapes.
The Landscape Endowment Concept builds on the established foundations of Conservation Trust Funds and blended finance instruments, introducing key innovations including the capacity to issue loan guarantees that catalyze private sector co-investment, and the structured delivery of Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) aligned with local priorities and verified through context-appropriate Measurement, Monitoring, Reporting & Verification (MMRV) frameworks. The concept moves beyond traditional grant-making toward a durable, landscape-scale mechanism capable of generating predictable, long-duration funding flows while blending public, philanthropic, and private capital.
The research will examine how Landscape Endowments can anchor climate and biodiversity finance in locally supported stewardship models, deploy targeted catalytic capital to crowd in private sector resources, and strengthen long-term accountability and resilience across working landscapes.
The initiative builds on Clarmondial’s track record in structuring and implementing blended finance vehicles, including the Food Securities Fund and the Loan Guarantee Facility, and its landscape-focused engagement in regions such as Mount Kenya.
Over the coming months, Clarmondial and the Yale team will engage conservation trust funds, community representatives, governments, foundations, and private sector partners to refine the concept, test structuring options, and assess implementation pathways. A white paper summarising the findings will be published later this year.
