CSF Projects

Conservation Strategy Fund helps local conservationists use economic tools to find smart, efficient solutions to the most urgent environmental problems. Since its creation in 1998, CSF has conducted dozens of analysis projects in forests, rivers and coastal environments. Most of our work has focused in the tropics, where extraordinarily high levels of biological diversity are found. To maximize the reach and quality of our work, we involve leading experts and conservation organizations in all of our projects.

Photos of Madden Dam in Panama

HydroCalculator Tool

The HydroCalculator Tool empowers citizens to analyze the ecological, social, and financial impacts of hydroelectric dams. Click through below to see how you can analyze a hydro project online or see if someone else has already posted an analysis of the project in which you have an interest.

http://www.conservation-strategy.org/hydrocalculator-analyses

Interoceanica Sur Road in Peru

Tropical forests of southeastern Peru hold the highest biodiversity levels in the world. This unique region is threatened by the construction of a paved road linking Brazil to Peruvian ports on the Pacific Ocean. CSF is carrying out a study to identify priority areas for conservation investments to mitigate the so-called "Interoceánica Sur" road's impacts. To do this we are analyzing the road’s effects on land-use profits, information we will combine with data on the distribution of wild plant and animal species.

Usumacinta Dam

In a collaborative study by ProNatura Chiapas, Defensores de la Naturaleza, Conservation International and CSF, we analyzed a dam proposed on the Usumacinta River in Mexico. Our objective is to stimulate discussion on the costs and benefits of such projects in Mesoamerica's largest watershed. We chose to analyze the Tenosique project (formerly known as Boca del Cerro), given that it is apparently the dam being given the most serious consideration by planners.

Infrastructure Integration and Biodiversity Conservation

From 2004 through 2006, CSF teamed up with the Nature Conservancy and many local organizations on a project to reduce habitat loss resulting from major infrastructure projects. The approach was to better inform stakeholders about the relative economic and environmental merits and impacts of the many construction projects planned for the region. CSF created an inventory of projects, trained conservation leaders in economic tools for project analysis and conducted four field studies.

Belo Monte Dam

In this study, we analyzed the costs and benefits of the Belo Monte project on the Xingu River in the Southern Amazon. For our analysis, we created three scenarios. The first examines only the “internal” costs and benefits of Belo Monte as an energy project, excluding the costs of its impacts on competing economic activities and the environment. In the second scenario we included some external costs: tourism losses, impacts on water supply and fisheries and declines in water quality during construction.

Paraguay-Paraná Waterway

This study presents an analysis of the implications of proposed upgrades to the Paraguay-Paraná waterway on the Mato Grosso State soybean transportation. The waterway passes through the vast and biologically rich Pantanal wetlands, shared by Bolivia and Brazil. Social cost-benefit analyses were carried out for 4 distinct scenarios. The results cast doubt on the feasibility of waterway improvements, mostly due to environmental externalities and to limitations on cargo transfer to the waterway route.

Jalapão Water Diversion

Three Brazil 2000 course participants not previously acquainted are now working together to analyze potential impacts of water diversion from the Tocantins River in central Brazil. The project would divert water from the Tocantins in the Jalapáo region, a unique transition zone between Cerrado woodland and caatinga. The water would be pumped into Brazil's arid Northeast for irrigation and hydroelectric power.

Roads and Dams in Madidi and Pilón-Lajas, Bolivia

The region of Northwest Bolivia where the Andes meet the Amazon plain is considered by some to be a rich natural treasure and by others to be under-developed. In 1995, the Bolivian government officially protected 1.8 million hectares of rain forest, cloud forest, rare deciduous forest and an array of plant and animal species nearly unsurpassed in the world's nature reserves.

Chalillo Dam

In 2000 CSF worked with the Belize Alliance of Conservation Non-Government Organizations to provide Belizeans with an independent analysis of a proposed dam on the Macal River. The upper Macal and its tributaries provide habitat for rare scarlet macaws, Morelet's crocodiles, river otters, tapirs and jaguars. But it also has potential to supply electricity to consumers throughout Belize.