Weekend of a Conservation Financista

Not much to report -- chugging away at the business plan for the trust fund in Cambodia and working with an engineer to build macros and functionality into the valuation model we prepared for the voluntary carbon project. Trying to add value wherever I can, learn new things, and make it through the week so I can go diving.

Before I launch into telling you about diving - I wanted to field one question from a reader (yes, there are actually people reading about conservation finance...) My mother asks, " One thing I wondered is, writing the plan, do you have any funding resources to start with, or does it all have to be generated within the plan? Or does the plan partly do this and works to entice others to invest/donate resources?"

Well, Mum, in a nutshell, there are a couple of organizations interested in funding conservation in the region through a sustainable financing mechanism. These organizations seek to leverage the money that they could set aside for conservation with commitments from other international organizations, and everyone wants a deeper commitment from the government of Cambodia on conserving the area.

So, part of the plan will look at the fundraising landscape -- mainly at international multilateral donors, large, private philanthropic foundations, and NGOs -- to identify their requirements for funding and gauge their interest.

On to diving!! The highlight of my dives can only be expressed with this photo of a Mola Mola (ocean sunfish). We spotted two of these prehistoric lopsided creatures on our dive on Saturday, which was 15 minutes off the coast of Padang Bai at a dive site called Mimpang.

The one pictured above had to be more than 2 meters in diameter. When I first saw it coming out of the deep blue down at ~25 meters below the surface, I thought it was a whale. After realizing it wasn't quite that big, I was still hesitant to approach it. Never having seen anything like it I wasn't sure what it would do. Luckily, it turns out that the Mola Mola, like most fish, is pretty mellow, and we swam in circles around him/her for a good 5-10 minutes.