Green Wealth: How to Turn Unusable Land into Moneymaking Assets (and Save the World)

This dense and informative introduction to environmental banking, written by two eco-bank cofounders, guides private investors in setting up a viable business that can help restore ecological balance. More abstract than financial banking, this environmental model allows the banker to cultivate an environmental project such as a wetland, and to "sell" its positive impact as "credits" to a company that might have harmed other wetlands, in an attempt to restore overall balance. The concept introduces entrepreneurialism and profitability into resource management, countering previous strategies of "command and control" that have allowed industry to ignore or simply pay fines for environmental transgressions, or to make inadequate moves to restore the environment. After defining the concept and providing an industry overview, the authors explain how to set up such a bank and instruct readers on evaluating profitability. In addition to supplying significant detail on the various bank types (particularly for wetlands, but also for endangered species, carbon, water quality and land development rights), they include an annotated business plan, prospectus and an appendix of resource recommendations. More than just an introduction to this complex subject, this comprehensive and definitive guide offers readers a blueprint for starting their own banks. (Mar.)