February 2011
The American Carbon Registry (ACR) was awarded runner-up as “Best Registry Provider” in Environmental Finance’s 2010 Voluntary Carbon Market Survey. More than 500 global carbon market participants were asked to write in votes based on reliability, innovation and quality of service provided. The ACR team thanks its supporters and looks forward to continuing to provide top-notch service in 2011.
Dr. Virginie Zoumenou, a nutritionist and program leader at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore, educated people in Nigeria about better nutrition by serving as a Winrock volunteer in the USAID farmer-to-farmer project. See her story in this video from WBOC in Maryland.
Winrock International in Nepal has prepared a documentary highlighting an initiative that promotes the use of locally produced Jatropha oil as a sustainable source of rural energy for irrigation. Watch the full documentary.
The Program on Food Security and the Environment at Stanford University has launched a symposium series featuring leading experts on global food security and food policy. The series opened Feb. 10 and the lectures will be available online within a month after each talk. Get more information on the symposium series.
Are you interested in working at Winrock? Search current openings and post your resume. Would you like to volunteer with Winrock? Learn more about new opportunities for volunteers..
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Bumpers, Dann, Van Wyck join Winrock International Board of Directors
 William Bumpers, Melissa Shackleton Dann and Bronson Van Wyck have been elected as Winrock International’s newest board members – joining other recognized leaders from both the public and private sector on Winrock’s board of directors.
Bumpers is an environmental partner in the Washington, D.C., office of Baker Botts, LLP, and is head of the firm’s global Climate Change Practice. He is regarded as a leading authority on climate change issues and has been involved in transactions involving Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) projects or Certified Emission Reduction (CER) sales in Malaysia, China, Liberia and Equatorial Guinea.
Dann brings more than 20 years experience in international environmental policy and program strategy to Endurance Consulting in Chevy Chase, Md., where she is a consultant to foundations, NGOs and the private sector, delivering services ranging from improving organizational effectiveness and revenue streams to devising strategies that can help achieve transformative and effective change.
Van Wyck is president of Bronson Van Wyck and Company, Inc., of Tuckerman, Ark., and Acampo, Cal., and has been chairman of Winrock's President's Arkansas Advisory Council since 1997. He will rejoin the Winrock’s board of directors in May. A graduate of Harvard Business School, Van Wyck focuses on agriculture investment properties in the Mississippi Delta and California. 
Wallace Center Helps Entrepreneurs Make a Difference in US Food Security
 As Winrock’s Wallace Center completes the review process for potential Year Two social enterprise grantees of the Healthy Urban Food Enterprise Development (HUFED) Center, many of its 2010 grantees have recently been recognized for their efforts in improving US food security in their communities.
California-based La Cocina was one of those grantees. Their executive director and programs manager were recently named two of nine Hitachi Foundation Yoshiyama Young Entrepreneurs of 2010, in recognition of their entrepreneurial leadership. Another 2010 grantee, Shagbark Seed & Mill Co. in Appalachian Ohio were named among “25 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World" by Utne Reader in December.
“The 2010 HUFED grantees exemplify leadership and the ability to galvanize collaboration,” said John Fisk, Wallace Center director. “The recognition these groups have received further confirms they have a high potential for success.”
The Wallace Center is dedicated to addressing issues resulting from a broken food system across the U.S., where many people suffer from hunger or diet-related diseases due to a lack of accessible and affordable healthy food. The 13 grantees from 2010 are addressing various bottlenecks in the food system by implementing mobile markets, healthy food retail and increased efficiency in local food aggregation and distribution channels to serve low-income and historically disadvantaged communities.
Another 2010 grantee, D.C. Central Kitchen, credits HUFED as a key to their potential. “Last year, HUFED made a critical strategic contribution in our pilot program to bring fresh produce to Washington D.C.’s food deserts and create jobs for some of our city’s most vulnerable residents,” said Alex Moore, grant manager for the nonprofit. 
Case Study Documents Successful Payment for Environmental Services Pilot
 In January, team members from the Winrock-implemented Asia Regional Biodiversity Conservation Program (ARBCP) released a case study on the program’s successful implementation of a Payment for Environmental Services (PFES) pilot program in Vietnam’s Lam Dong Province, which resulted in the livelihood improvement of thousands of rural poor, the protection of critical forestland and a national decree which will result in the future protection of many more forests.
Since 2006, the program – supported by USAID/RDMA (Regional Development Mission for Asia) – has helped the Government of Vietnam implement a PFES program with the knowledge that Vietnam is rapidly losing critical forestland and has endured a great deal of environmental degradation. The PFES program operated on the belief that environmental conservation was much more likely if landowners were compensated for the true economic value of the services a fully intact ecosystem provides – a point backed up by the results of the case study.
By the end of 2010, the PFES pilot implantation had seen many successes. As a result of the program, more than 209,000 hectares of critical forestland benefit from enhanced protection and payments totaling U.S. $4.46 million were made to forest management boards, forestry business and 9,870 households (more than two-thirds of which were comprised of ethnic minorities). But perhaps most importantly, the success of the pilot led the Vietnamese government to issue a national PFES decree, meaning that more forests and their related ecosystems will be protected in the future.  |
