--- title: what a networked project actually is canonical_url: https://ensurance.app/guide/what-a-networked-project-actually-is markdown_url: https://ensurance.app/guide/what-a-networked-project-actually-is.md subtitle: one project is a bet. a network of projects is a portfolio — and a region category: nature-finance --- # what a networked project actually is *one project is a bet. a network of projects is a portfolio — and a region* You have a good project. Maybe it is a headwater forest thinned so the next fire stays on the ground, a floodplain reconnected to its river, a meadow holding water again, or a run of fish coming back up a creek that had lost it. You also have one funder, one grant cycle, and a renewal letter due in the spring. The work is not the weak part. The weak part is that the project stands alone. A **networked project** is a conservation or restoration project that is paid into by the people who depend on what it produces, and that routes a share of what it receives to the projects it depends on — so no single project has to carry itself alone. The headwater forest, the floodplain, the meadow, and the run of fish exist — and already trade water, shade, soil, and food with each other — whether or not anyone funds a project on them. Ensurance gives each one an account so the people who depend on it can pay into the network. The network is not the forest. That last sentence carries the weight. The forest is the thing. The network is how the money learns to move the way the water already does. ## the trap: a project asked to stand alone Most conservation and restoration work is set up as a project: one site, one budget, one funder, one reporting period. That is the shape grants are written in, and it has restored real acres. A land trust that has run one good project for twelve years did not make a mistake. The shape is fragile, though, and in more than one place: - **One funder.** When the cycle ends or the funder's priorities shift, the work stops, however good it was. - **One site.** Everything rides on one piece of ground. One flood or one sale can take the whole thing. - **One grant cycle.** A forest works on decades. The budget works on a cycle, and every cycle restarts the ask. - **One fire season.** One bad summer can take the asset the project spent years building. The usual fix does not fix it. When a project struggles, the instinct is to find a bigger grant for that same project. That buys time for the same single point of failure. *The pilot that stands alone is the pilot that ends.* Why that happens, and why it is not the team's fault, is the subject of [why conservation projects fail on their own](/guide/why-conservation-projects-fail-on-their-own). Meanwhile the forest was never alone. It sends water down to the floodplain and shade over the creek. The meadow holds water the fish need in late summer. The ecology was a network the whole time; only the funding treated each piece as an island. Much of the value is made [between the pieces, not inside one of them](/guide/the-web-is-the-asset). ## what a network of projects does A network does three things a lone project cannot. 1. **The people who already depend on a project pay into it.** The water utility downstream of the forest. The county whose road sits below the slope. The town that fishes the run. They are not donors to a cause; they are paying for something they already use. 2. **Each project routes a share of what it receives to the projects it depends on.** The floodplain depends on the forest above it, so part of what the floodplain receives can go upstream. 3. **Strong projects carry new and underperforming ones.** A new project starts with the network's routing behind it instead of from zero. One that has a bad year is held up by the payors and projects that still depend on it, because a dry summer does not end the dependence. *Strong projects carry new ones. That is what a network is for.* That gives the network two kinds of resilience. ### financial resilience: a portfolio, not a bet A single project is a single holding. If it fails, the whole position fails. A network of projects is many holdings, linked, and paid by different people for different reasons. One bad year in one place does not have to close the whole. Nature already runs this way. In Bristol Bay, Alaska, the variability in annual sockeye salmon returns — the fish coming back each year, not a yield — is 2.2 times lower than it would be if the several hundred discrete populations there were a single homogeneous one (Schindler et al., *Nature*, 2010). What that means for projects is the subject of [nature already runs a portfolio](/guide/nature-already-runs-a-portfolio). One limit, stated plainly: nature is not uncorrelated. A basin-wide drought hits every project in the basin. A network spreads risk across kinds of links — water, fire, corridor, soil — and across regions, and it keeps its weak nodes alive. It does not pretend the shocks are independent. [What asset correlation actually measures](/guide/what-asset-correlation-actually-measures) covers that part. ### regional resilience: ecological, social, cultural The links that hold the money up are the same links that make a region work. Water runs downhill from the forest to the intake. Fire moves along fuel from one ownership to the next. Animals move along corridors. Soil either stays on the slope or ends up in the reservoir. When the projects along those links are funded together, the links hold. That is the ecological part. A region is also its people: the ones who hunt, fish, farm, and drink there. In a network they are the payors, not the audience for an appeal. That is the social part. The cultural part is what that keeps in place: the ditch, the run, the hunt a community has held for generations stays in that community's hands, because its people are the ones paying and deciding. The Yuba River in California shows the shape in one project. The Yuba I Forest Resilience Bond, launched in 2018 on a 15,000-acre planning area of the Tahoe National Forest, was paid back by Yuba Water Agency, the U.S. Forest Service, and CAL FIRE — three payors, each getting something different from the same forest. How that one project grew into a network is in [landscape-scale conservation needs a way to pay across the fence](/guide/landscape-scale-conservation-needs-a-way-to-pay-across-the-fence). This is not a U.S. idea. Water funds in Latin American cities have downstream users paying many upstream projects at once, on the same logic. The first of them, in Quito, has run since 2000. [What Quito depends on](/guide/what-quito-depends-on) tells that story. :::johnson **one project is a bet. a network of projects is a portfolio.** And because the links are water, fire, corridors, and soil, the portfolio is also a region. [find the places you already depend on →](/explore?from=guide) ::: ## a project alone vs a networked project | what changes | a project alone | a networked project | |---|---|---| | Who pays | One funder | The payors who depend on what it produces | | Where it sits | One site | Linked sites: upstream, downstream, along the corridor | | When money arrives | Once per grant cycle | Continuously, as payments are routed | | One fire season | Can take the whole asset | The network can carry it while it recovers | | A new project | Starts from zero | Starts with the network's routing behind it | | The ask | "Please care about nature" | "This is yours" | The left column is not wrong. It is the column most projects start in. The right column is what the same project looks like once it has neighbors and payors. ## you join at the node you depend on Nobody joins "global water." People act on the specific thing they rely on, and a network lets them pay exactly that. A water utility joins at the forest above its intake. A county road engineer joins at the slope above the road and the storm that comes off it. A family that fishes a lake joins at the creek that feeds it. A manufacturer joins at the river that supplies its plant and the town its workers live in. Not global biodiversity: the run of fish in their river. *It is not the world's water. It is your water, and the forest that makes it.* That is the whole argument of [people don't care about nature, they care about theirs](/guide/people-dont-care-about-nature-they-care-about-theirs), and it is why a network can grow. Every new payor arrives for a reason of their own, adds a node or strengthens one, and part of what they pay can travel on to what that node depends on. ## how the accounts work Once the network is clear, the plumbing is short. Each place or purpose holds an account in its own name; ensurance calls these accounts **agents**. A **certificate** is a share of one named place. **Proceeds** are the routing that sends a set share of what one account receives on to the accounts it depends on. Here is what is live today: named accounts for places and purposes, certificates on named places, proceeds splits that route a set share onward, and a public view of where the money goes. Each account's operator sets its split. The network can route; it does not rebalance itself. Volumes are small, and the network grows one node at a time. Yuba put three payors on one forest with a purpose-built bond. An account in the forest's own name is meant to make the next arrangement like that ordinary: a payor pays the node, and the node's split sends a share on. For the full walk-through, read [projects that fund each other](/guide/projects-that-fund-each-other). To see routing on live accounts, open [proceeds](/proceeds?from=guide). ## where to go from here If you run one project, the question is not whether it was worth doing. It was. The better question is who already depends on what it produces, and which projects it depends on. Those are its first links. Start with [why conservation projects fail on their own](/guide/why-conservation-projects-fail-on-their-own), or open the [map of places and purposes](/explore?from=guide) and look for the one upstream of you. ## frequently asked questions ### what is a networked project? A networked project is a conservation or restoration project that is paid into by the people who depend on what it produces, and that routes a share of what it receives to the projects it depends on. No single project carries itself alone; networked projects hold each other up. ### why do conservation projects struggle on their own? A standalone project usually rests on one funder, one site, and one grant cycle, and one fire season can take the asset. The work can be excellent and still stop when any of those gives way. The fix is links, not a bigger grant: payors who depend on the project, and projects it can lean on. ### how is a network of projects different from a fund? A fund pools capital, and a central allocator decides where it goes. A network keeps each project's own account and its own payors, and links projects by what they actually depend on, so a utility pays for the forest above its intake rather than for a general cause. The two are not rivals. A water fund that is paid by downstream users and pays many upstream projects is already running the network's logic; a fund can also be one of the payors in a network. ## sources [Schindler et al., "Population diversity and the portfolio effect in an exploited species," *Nature* 465, 609–612 (2010)](https://www.nature.com/articles/nature09060) — Bristol Bay sockeye: several hundred discrete populations; variability in annual returns 2.2 times lower than a single homogeneous population would show. [Blue Forest — Yuba I Forest Resilience Bond](https://www.blueforest.org/our-impact/our-projects/yuba-i-frb/) — launched 2018 on a 15,000-acre planning area of the Tahoe National Forest; implemented by the National Forest Foundation; funded by Yuba Water, the USDA Forest Service, and CAL FIRE. ## the series [what a networked project actually is](/guide/what-a-networked-project-actually-is) — the definition, the two resiliences, and the table [why conservation projects fail on their own](/guide/why-conservation-projects-fail-on-their-own) — the good project and the single points of failure [nature already runs a portfolio](/guide/nature-already-runs-a-portfolio) — Bristol Bay's salmon and what keeps a portfolio alive [landscape-scale conservation needs a way to pay across the fence](/guide/landscape-scale-conservation-needs-a-way-to-pay-across-the-fence) — Yuba, water funds, and money that crosses the property line [how to fund the project you depend on](/guide/how-to-fund-the-project-you-depend-on) — find your node, pay it, let it route