More and more, conservation groups are using market tools to further their environmental goals. In the latest evidence of this trend, a venture-capital fund set up by The Nature Conservancy has made its first investment—a $500,000 bet on a Massachusetts chocolate maker that promotes organic cultivation of cacao in Latin America. The Nature Conservancy, a U.S. non-governmental organization, hopes its Eco-Enterprises Fund will help stimulate Latin American investment projects that are both profitable and environmentally sound. The fund is drawing on $10 million in capital—$5 million from the Inter-American Development Bank and the rest from Avina, the Andean Development Corporation, the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation and two U.S. investors who contributed $50,000 each. “We are very much connected with... [Log in to read more]