[Full Length] Money: In Service of Nature? — with Lorenzo de Rosenzweig

Written By alexa firmenich

“Every morning I am grateful that I have been put by destiny and by work, in this position of being someone that eventually might become a good ancestor.”

- Lorenzo de Rosenzweig

 

SYNOPSIS:

Lorenzo de Rosenzweig is what you might call an “OG” (original gangsta) of the conservation finance world. An engineer and marine biologist by training, for 25 years he was president of a $170 million endowment conservation trust fund - the Mexican Fund for the Conservation of Nature - and for over 17 years he was chairman of the Mesoamerican Reef Fund. During his tenure in both institutions he led resource mobilization efforts that raised close to $410 million. He is part of several global conservation finance initiatives, such as the Conservation Finance Alliance Executive Committee and the World Environment Center.

Now “retired” he has started up a new enterprise, Terra Habitus A.C. — a regional environmental fund for Northern Mexico, focused on private lands conservation, borderlands cooperation, regenerative ranching, riparian/waterbasin regeneration and environmental journalism.

Lorenzo is also a nature photographer and a watercolor artist, and is working on his first fiction book, a collection of illustrated essays on human nature and biodiversity called “Impossible animals in improbable environments”.

With this long list of accolades, and a long-time friendship and mentorship between us, who better to dig into the tricky questions surrounding finance’s relationship to the living world?

Join us as we talk about deep time and becoming a good ancestor; how to activate our senses and capacities to see the world for what it is; how to reconcile nature’s timelines with financial timelines; and some vivid tales on one lucky whale that saved a pelagic ecosystem from destruction.

 

GUEST BIO:

Lorenzo de Rosenzweig is an engineer and marine biologist by training, who for 25 years headed up the Mexican Fund for the Conservation of Nature (a $170 million endowment Conservation Trust Fund) and was Chairman of the Mesoamerican Reef Fund (a $35 million endowment fund) for more than 17 years. During his tenure in both institutions he led resource mobilization efforts that raised close to US$410 million of both project and endowment funds. He is part of several global conservation finance initiatives, such as the Conservation Finance Alliance Executive Committee, the World Environment Center, The Mexican Institute for Competitiveness (IMCO), the Fund for Communication and Environmental Education, the Lindblad Expeditions-National Geographic Conservation and Exploration Fund, and several more.

Now “retired” he has started up a new enterprise, Terra Habitus A.C. — a regional environmental fund for Northern México, focused on private lands conservation, borderlands cooperation, regenerative ranching, riparian/waterbasin regeneration, resource mobilization and strategic communication through environmental journalism.

Lorenzo is also a nature, photographer, a watercolor artist, a scientific illustrator and is working on his first fiction book, a collection of illustrated essays on human nature and biodiversity called “Impossible animals in improbable environments”.

QUOTES:

  • We have to work with our heart and our intelligence to bring things back slowly to how things should be.

  • Every morning I am grateful that I have been put by destiny and by work, in this position of being someone that eventually might become a good ancestor.

  • Communication is the most underused resource for conservation - everyone has a biophilic soul and we need to connect them with great stories.

SHOW NOTES

LINKS:

REGENERATIVE ECONOMICS

FINANCE FOR NATURE

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alexa firmenich
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[Full Length] Money: In Service of Nature? — with Eric Smith