Links

EPA's Environmental Financing Information Network (EFIN)
Provides information on financing alternatives for state and local environmental programs and small businesses. EFIN maintains an on-line database containing abstracts of publications, case studies, and contacts; and distributes EPA documents on the topic of environmental financing.

Local Government Environmental Assistance Network
Provides information on financial resources for local government environmental protection projects.

EPA's Guidebook of Financial Tools
Profiles a wide range of approaches that are useful in paying for sustainable environmental systems. The guidebook is divided into 10 sections, presenting outline information on approximately 250 financial tools. The first five sections present comprehensive financing tools that include traditional means of raising revenue, borrowing capital, enhancing credit, creating public-private partnerships, and ways of providing technical assistance.

Environmental Finance Center
This Center at the University of Maryland was created to help local communities, primarily in the mid-Atlantic states, find innovative ways to pay for environmental projects. The Center's publications, fact sheets, and links to environmental finance sources are useful to those from other regions, as well.

EnviroTools
A website created at Michigan State University that helps empower citizen participation in cleaning up contaminated areas. The site includes links to state, private and federal sources of funding.

National Park Service Land and Water Conservation Fund
The LWCF program provides matching grants to States and local governments for the acquisition and development of public outdoor recreation areas and facilities.

The Conservation Fund
The Conservation Fund forges partnerships to preserve our nation's outdoor heritage--America's legacy of wildlife habitat, working landscapes and community open space.

Financing in Support of Environmental Protection and Conservation
A project of the North American Commission for Environmental Cooperation that is exploring how environmental information affects financial markets and what are the investment opportunities in the environmental "sector."

Shoreline Incentives Program, Burnett County, Wisconsin
provides tax incentives to landowners to restore and maintain well-vegetated lakeshore buffers in order to improve lake quality, habitat, and therefore property values.

Many state departments of environmental protection or environmental quality also offer grants or loans to communities for environmental protection projects such as watershed or open space acquisition, or air or water quality improvement, or pollution prevention.

Articles and Publications

Financing Models for Environmental Protection: Helping Communities Meet Their Environmental Goals, U.S. EPA Document # 202B92006. Available from EFIN Librarian at efin@epa.gov. Or contact the National Service Center for Environmental Publications through its website or toll-free number 800-490-9198.

Creating a Local Greenprint for Growth
This working paper from the Trust for Public Land includes a chapter on Financing Land Conservation.

Last updated: April 28, 2004

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