--- title: who governs a natural asset canonical_url: https://ensurance.app/guide/who-governs-a-natural-asset markdown_url: https://ensurance.app/guide/who-governs-a-natural-asset.md subtitle: the people already at the table set the rules. a share lets more of the people downstream pay for the next acre category: ensurance --- # who governs a natural asset *the people already at the table set the rules. a share lets more of the people downstream pay for the next acre* Natural asset governance is the set of decisions about a living system that several people depend on: who cares for it, who pays for that care, what counts as a good result, and who says yes to the next round of work. For the forest above Denver's drinking water, those decisions already have a table. Since 2010, Denver Water and the Rocky Mountain Region of the U.S. Forest Service have run a forest partnership called **From Forests to Faucets**. The Colorado State Forest Service and the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) sit with them. Together they fund thinning, prescribed burns, and replanting in the zones Denver Water prioritizes. Each agency decides the work on the land it manages. That is governance, and it is working. The forest and the snow that become a city's drinking water exist whether or not anyone buys a policy or a certificate. Ensurance is how the people who already receive that water share the payment, the measurement, and the rules that keep the forest working. The share is not the forest. ## natural asset governance starts with who is already at the table The forest does not follow the map of who owns it. National forest, state land, and private parcels sit side by side in the same drainage. "When a fire breaks out, it simply doesn't respect those boundaries," says Scott Woods, a watershed management forester at the Colorado State Forest Service. Bringing in the state forest service and NRCS is what lets the partnership treat non-federal and private land as well as national forest. The partners aim that work at what Denver Water calls **zones of concern**: overly dense forest in priority watersheds across 10 counties in north-central Colorado, where a large fire would reach the dams, reservoirs, pipes, and streams that supply the Front Range. The goal is not a forest that never burns. "The goal of our treatments isn't to stop fires, it's to prevent large catastrophic wildfires," says Erin Connelly, supervisor of the Pike and San Isabel National Forests. So the honest answer to "who governs a natural asset?" is the people who tend it and depend on it, usually together, usually already. Elinor Ostrom won a Nobel Prize for showing that communities who share a resource can write workable rules for it without waiting for an outside authority. Practice beats theory ([more on that](/guide/governance-the-tyranny-of-theory)). The protocol does not govern Denver Water's forest. The people already at that table do. What an instrument adds is a way for them, and for others who drink the same water, to hold a share of the work. ## four questions every shared forest answers Every shared living system, whether a forest, a wetland, or a reach of river, answers the same four questions sooner or later. Most partnerships answer them in agreements, meeting minutes, and habit. A share can hold the answers in one place, set for that asset and no other. | question | what it means in the forest | who answers it | |---|---|---| | who may hold a share | which utilities, agencies, towns, landowners, or carriers can pay in | the partners | | who receives the money | the treatment on a given acre: a partner's project, a crew, a landowner inside a zone | the partners | | which metric counts | acres treated in a zone of concern, trees planted in a burn scar | the partners, with whoever measures | | who approves the next season | which stands, which burns, which year | the partners, each on the land it manages | Look at the last column. It does not change. The rules are pieces, not one bylaw for every watershed: who signs, who holds the shares, where the money goes, what gets measured. The people on the ground pick the pieces and put them together. A small partnership might want every partner to sign before money moves. A larger one might let the utility and the forest service approve the season while anyone downstream can hold a share. Neither is the right answer. Each is that forest's answer. ## what the share holds, and what it does not A **certificate** is a share you hold with other people in one named piece of living work. Many holders can each hold an amount of the same certificate. It is not title to the dirt. It is not a stake in Denver Water or the partnership, and it does not promise a return. The payment funds the acre. It does not move a decision away from the people who manage the land. A share can carry the money, the measurement, and a say in the work. - **The money.** Payments on the share route to the work and to the accounts the partners named. That route is set per asset, not once for the whole protocol. - **The measurement.** The metric sits on that certificate's asset. Hold ten shares of a hundred and you hold a tenth of that recorded result, which you can report as your part of the partnership. - **The say.** Whatever the partners decided about holders and approvals travels with the share. A new holder joins on the table's terms, not their own. Social value comes along without a new token. A town, a water district, and a utility can each hold a share of the same forest. That shared stake is the social receipt. None of this retires insurance. If a large fire still comes, the policy that pays for the repair is still needed. Prevention shrinks what that check has to cover. It does not erase it. ## the watershed cost share, as an offer This is what sits behind the door, before you click it. **Buyer.** Denver Water, together with the partners already in From Forests to Faucets: the U.S. Forest Service Rocky Mountain Region, the Colorado State Forest Service, and NRCS. **Exposure.** The 1996 Buffalo Creek and 2002 Hayman fires destroyed 150,000 acres in Denver Water's South Platte River watershed. Hayman alone burned 138,000 acres around Cheesman Reservoir. The flash floods that followed cost Denver Water more than $27 million to repair infrastructure, remove sediment, and restore land in the drainages that feed Strontia Springs and Cheesman reservoirs. The drinking water still starts in that forest. **Solution.** [Source watershed investment](/solutions/utilities?from=guide&topic=shared-payment), a use case on our utilities page: fund the forests, wetlands, and meadows that keep water clean and flowing, and hold that work as a reportable watershed partnership. We structure the share and coordinate measurement with the people on the ground. A carrier that would pay after a fire in the same forest can read the [insurers page](/solutions/insurers?from=guide&topic=shared-payment), which covers funding fuel work and forest health before the loss. **Living work.** Continued care of the forest in the zones of concern: thinning dense stands, removing the fuel that carries fire into the crowns, prescribed burns, and replanting burn scars. The same forest the partnership already treats. **Unit.** A share per acre treated in a zone of concern, held as a reportable watershed partnership line. The partnership keeps its own ledger: nearly $96 million invested from 2010 through work planned into 2027, more than 120,000 acres treated, nearly two-thirds of them in the South Platte Basin, and 1.4 million trees planted in burned areas, as of July 2023. Our unit is not a second invoice on top of that. It is a continuing share of the next acre, open to parties who receive the water and are not yet paying in. "By combining resources, we're able to treat more acres than we could on our own," says Brian Ferebee, then Rocky Mountain regional forester. The share carries that sentence to the people downstream who are not yet at the table. **Instrument.** The live agent today is [south-platte-river.basin](https://ensurance.app/south-platte-river.basin?from=guide), the place on the river many parties already share. No certificate is minted on that agent. The certificate is **shared prevention**, coming soon under [risk-resilience.ensurance](https://ensurance.app/risk-resilience.ensurance?from=guide). It is not minted yet. You can [co-create it](/specific/create?mode=suggest&agent=risk-resilience.ensurance&name=shared%20prevention&from=guide) and propose its first rules. :::johnson **the forest stays governed by the people who tend it.** The share lets more of the people who drink its water pay for the next acre, on the table's rules. [see source watershed investment →](/solutions/utilities?from=guide&topic=shared-payment) ::: ## how to take a share Four doors, from lightest to firmest. 1. **Look at the live place.** [south-platte-river.basin](https://ensurance.app/south-platte-river.basin?from=guide) is the river many parties already share. It is an agent, not a certificate. 2. **Read the use case for your seat.** Utilities: [source watershed investment](/solutions/utilities?from=guide&topic=shared-payment). Carriers who pay the fire after: [insurers](/solutions/insurers?from=guide&topic=shared-payment). 3. **Co-create shared prevention.** [Suggest the line](/specific/create?mode=suggest&agent=risk-resilience.ensurance&name=shared%20prevention&from=guide) under risk-resilience.ensurance, with the rules you would want: who may hold, where the money goes, which metric counts, who approves the season. 4. **Scope the acre.** [Talk to someone who can help](/contact?from=guide&topic=shared-payment). Start from a zone of concern and a partner list. The conversation ends with a draft share per acre treated, its holders, its money route, its metric, and its approval step, for your table to change. ## frequently asked questions ### who governs a natural asset? The people who tend it and depend on it. In the forest above Denver's water, that is From Forests to Faucets: Denver Water, the Forest Service Rocky Mountain Region, the Colorado State Forest Service, and NRCS. An instrument holds their rules. It does not replace them. ### can each project set its own rules? Yes. Each asset sets who may hold a share, who receives the money, which metric counts, and who approves the next season. A river shared by many owners and a single family's forest can run very different rules. ### what do we hold if we join the share? A portion of a certificate on that asset: the record of your part of the money that went to the work, your part of the recorded result, and whatever say the partners attached to holding. You do not hold the land. ### watershed cost share A watershed cost share is several parties paying for work on the land that feeds their water, because none of them would fund all of it alone. From Forests to Faucets is one. A share per acre treated lets more of the people downstream pay in and report what they paid for. ### does a share replace fire insurance? No. Insurance pays for a defined loss after it happens, and that check is still needed. The share pays for the work that makes the catastrophic loss less likely. ## sources [Denver Water — Building a better forest](https://www.denverwater.org/tap/building-better-forest) — From Forests to Faucets partners, investment, acres, zones of concern, Buffalo Creek and Hayman costs, and quotes (updated July 2024) [The Nobel Prize — Elinor Ostrom, facts](https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/2009/ostrom/facts/) — 2009 prize for her analysis of economic governance, especially the commons ## the series 1. [what insurance actually is](/guide/what-insurance-actually-is?from=guide) 2. [the pool pays the disaster](/guide/the-pool-pays-the-disaster?from=guide) 3. [the benefit was already shared](/guide/the-benefit-was-already-shared?from=guide) 4. [you don't have to shoulder it alone](/guide/you-dont-have-to-shoulder-it-alone?from=guide) 5. [what a share can carry](/guide/what-a-share-can-carry?from=guide) 6. [who governs a natural asset](/guide/who-governs-a-natural-asset?from=guide)