Ecosystem Investment Partners (EIP), a private equity firm has raised nearly $1.5 billion for “investing in nature-based solutions.”
EIP intends to use the fund for “greenfield mitigation banks” to acquire assets aimed at restoring and conserving over 8,000 acres of wetlands and wildlife habitat and 23 miles of streams in Florida, Kentucky, Wisconsin, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, California, and Louisiana.
With these investments, EIP will create “ecosystem services” that “mitigate unavoidable impacts to wetlands, streams, water quality, habitat, and other critical natural resources stemming from infrastructure, commercial, industrial, and residential development.”
Since 2006, EIP claims it has assisted in funding “over 90 projects across 19 states that have restored more than 53,000 acres of wetlands and 260 miles of streams.”
It’s not inconceivable that those funds were used to purchase conservation easements on private lands that then could be enrolled in Natural Asset Companies (NACs).
Being a “global” investment company, it is easily assured EIP and its affiliates all supported the Security Exchange Commission and Intrinsic Exchange Commission’s efforts to create NACs.
As a reminder, NACs were being created to enroll “ecosystem services” into an investment scheme that would eventually own and manage those assets to the detriment of our government and private landowners whose land was “protected.”
