A conservation economy is in the self-interest of individuals and communities. Ecotrust provides tools and brokers resources for those taking a leadership role in the conservation economy.

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Ecotrust is an innovative non-profit organization dedicated to supporting the emergence of a conservation economy along North America's rain forest coast, the region from San Francisco to Anchorage. We work in urban and rural areas to support entrepreneurs whose work improves environmental, economic, and social conditions. We have spent the last ten years building a conservation economy in the coastal temperate rainforest stretching from Big Sur, California to Kodiak Island, Alaska. In this time, we have:

Co-founded an environmental bank, ShoreBank Pacific

Redeveloped The Natural Capital Center as a landmark green building and incubator for businesses and non-profits

Cultivated local leadership and nurtured institutional capacity in communities throughout the bioregion

Mapped and analyzed the bioregion in fresh ways

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Ecotrust treats land, people, and economy as part of a whole system. Our work is compatible with the rigorous scientific framework of The Natural Step, but also embraces culture, planning and design, and a strong commitment to social justice. Simply put, we seek simultaneous ecological, social, and financial returns: the triple bottom line.

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On this site, Ecotrust seeks to distill its work in this bioregion into a series of explicit, testable, and replicatable patterns for growing a conservation economy. Together, these building blocks form a pattern language that can be used as a planning and management tool at all levels of scale, both in this bioregion and beyond. Pattern languages have been applied effectively to buildings, cities, and software for the last thirty years.

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