The only accredited provider of INFFER™ services in Canada, Land Stewardship Centre, with our partner and INFFER™ developer, Natural Decisions, is bringing awareness and knowledge of this tool to key decision makers, land-use planners and program developers, in an effort to grow the capacity to implement an asset-based approach to natural resource management.
An important element to successfully incorporating sound stewardship principles into land use, development and natural resource management efforts is having the ability to assess and prioritize projects to address diverse environmental, economic and social issues.
Since 2011, we have partnered with the Natural Decisions team, and the Government of Alberta (Agriculture), on projects ranging from assessing water quality enhancement programs in the Bow River and Modeste Creek watersheds, to reviewing options for habitat restoration and stewardship for wildlife conservation in the prairies of Saskatchewan and Alberta. Critical to the success of these assessments is working with local and regional stakeholders who are willing to explore an alternative approach to program planning and evaluation that is based on sound economic principles of benefit/cost analysis which, because of this, provides a strong basis for the development of business cases to gain additional investment and support for a particular program or project.
This approach aims to help people determine whether the natural asset projects they are investing in will deliver tangible results within budget, whether the tools and technical capacity needed to attain those results will be available to the project, and whether the people who need to be on board to make it happen will be there when the time comes for action.
A New Way To Prioritize
INFFER™ (Investment Framework for Environmental Resources) is a valuable decision support tool used for assessing and prioritizing projects to address diverse environmental issues and challenges such as reduced water quality, biodiversity, conservation planning and land degradation. The main goal of INFFER™ is to achieve the highest value for environmental and natural resource outcomes that is possible with available resources.
INFFER™ can be used to set clear priorities, streamline program delivery, enhance accountability of public funds invested into environmental initiatives and help ensure the responsible investment of these funds for a greater return on investment. INFFER™ was developed and is owned by the University of Western Australia. Natural Decisions, a small Australian company, has the license to commercialize it and partner with other trained providers who can implement INFFER™ project assessments.
Contact us about putting INFFER™ to work for your project.