Canopy is a pan-African conservation intelligence and finance platform covering all 54 African countries and 200 key protected areas. It gives anyone deploying conservation capital an apples-to-apples comparison of country risk, country conservation performance and protected area performance.

It is the measurement layer conservation M&E runs on, watching every park from orbit and reading the record on the ground, then setting that against the money: what a country costs to protect, what it currently receives, and how risky it is to fund.

Canopy: four scoring models Canopy is a pan-African conservation intelligence and finance platform covering all 54 African countries and 200 key protected areas, supporting anyone deploying conservation capital across Africa with an apples-to-apples comparison of country risk, country conservation performance and protected area performance. Four model boxes, each with the question that model answers. PACE for Protected Area Conservation Effectiveness with 200 PAs and 162 KPAs answers: is this PA working? CCS for Canopy Country Score covering 54 countries answers: which country is most investable? C-RISK for conservation and policy risk covering 54 countries answers: how risky is this country? C-FIN for conservation finance covering 54 countries answers: is this country funded? It uses four scoring models that operate in parallel: PACE Protected Area Conservation Effectiveness 200 PAs, 162 KPAs Is this PA working? CCS Canopy Country Score 54 countries Which country is most investable? C-RISK Conservation and policy risk 54 countries How risky is this country? C-FIN Conservation finance by country 54 countries Is this country funded?

It uses four scoring models that operate in parallel:

  • PACE (Protected Area Conservation Effectiveness, 200 PAs, 162 KPAs)
  • CCS (Canopy Country Score, 54 countries)
  • C-RISK (conservation and policy risk, 54 countries)
  • C-FIN (conservation finance, 54 countries)
Canopy: how it works Top box: How does it work? Canopy pairs large language models with structured datasets and direct satellite observation to drive its quantitative indices. Every entry runs through a rigorous pipeline: drafted or computed, challenged by a second critical pass, then versioned and snapshotted so the full history is auditable. Three arrows point down to three pipelines. The left box (LLM Pipeline) describes the reading work for every PA, country, and carbon project: operator reports, academic papers, journalism, NGO investigations, and disclosures, scored on a five-rung rubric. The right box (DATA Pipeline) describes the hard data: credit ratings, bond markets, conflict data, protected area mapping, and the Verra carbon registry. The wide bottom box (SATELLITE Pipeline) shows nine Earth-observation layers per protected area: fire (NASA FIRMS active-fire thermal), forest (DIST-ALERT on Sentinel-2 and Landsat), vegetation (MODIS NDVI greenness anomalies), surface water (Sentinel-2 NDWI open-water extent), night-time lights (VIIRS DNB monthly), burned area (MODIS MCD64A1), land use inside the boundary and in the buffer (Dynamic World with Sentinel-2 spectral unmixing), biomass (ESA CCI above-ground carbon), and rainfall (CHIRPS week-of-year anomaly). They range from near-daily anomaly sweeps through monthly monitors to multi-year land-use and carbon analysis. How does it work? Canopy pairs large language models with structured datasets and direct satellite observation. Every entry runs through a rigorous pipeline: drafted or computed, challenged by a second critical pass, then versioned and snapshotted so the full history is auditable. LLM Pipeline For every PA, country, and carbon project, the model draws on operator reports, academic papers, independent journalism, NGO investigations, and official disclosures. It scores each dimension on a five-rung rubric and produces a composite. DATA Pipeline Canopy pulls in hard data. Credit ratings, bond market data, conflict data, global protected area mapping, plus the Verra carbon registry. SATELLITE Pipeline FIRE NASA FIRMS active-fire thermal FOREST Sentinel-2 + Landsat DIST-ALERT forest loss VEGETATION MODIS NDVI greenness anomalies WATER Sentinel-2 NDWI open-water extent NIGHT-TIME LIGHTS VIIRS DNB monthly settlement + activity BURNED AREA MODIS MCD64A1 monthly burned footprint LAND USE Dynamic World + Sentinel-2 interior + buffer, unmixed BIOMASS ESA CCI above-ground carbon RAINFALL CHIRPS week-of-year anomaly Nine Earth-observation layers per park, from near-daily anomaly sweeps through monthly monitors to multi-year land-use and carbon analysis.

How it works

Canopy pairs large language models with structured datasets and direct satellite observation. Every entry runs through a rigorous pipeline: drafted or computed, challenged by a second critical pass, then versioned and snapshotted so the full history is auditable.

For every PA, country, and carbon project, the model reads operator reports, academic papers, independent journalism, NGO investigations, and official disclosures. It scores each dimension on a five-rung rubric and produces a composite.

Alongside this reading work, Canopy pulls in hard data. Credit ratings, bond market data, conflict data, global protected area mapping, plus the Verra carbon registry.

And Canopy watches from orbit. Nine Earth-observation layers per protected area: fire (NASA FIRMS active-fire thermal), forest loss (DIST-ALERT on Sentinel-2 and Landsat), vegetation (MODIS NDVI greenness anomalies), surface water (Sentinel-2 NDWI open-water extent), night-time lights (VIIRS DNB monthly), burned area (MODIS MCD64A1), land use inside the boundary and in the buffer (Dynamic World with Sentinel-2 spectral unmixing), biomass (ESA CCI above-ground carbon), and rainfall (CHIRPS week-of-year anomaly). They range from near-daily anomaly sweeps through monthly monitors to multi-year land-use and carbon analysis.

Which Country?CCS: Canopy Country Score

T1 T2 T3 T4
Top 10
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54 countries ranked by CCS Open →

Which Protected Area?PACE: Protected Area Conservation Effectiveness

4.2 - 5.0 3.4 - 4.1 2.5 - 3.3 below 2.5
Top 10
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200 PAs rated, 162 keystones Open →

What's happening?C-INTEL: live conservation intelligence

Conservation news plus fire, forest, vegetation and water satellite watches, gathered for every keystone country and protected area. Browse by place, or read the weekly feed.

News + 4 satellite watches across 46 countries Open →

What else?Tools and references

Nature finance
The hub: capital supply, financing mechanisms, the carbon and biodiversity credit markets, and a tracker of real African deals.
Funders Instruments C-CARBON C-BIO Deals tracker
Conservation context
C-RISK scores C-FIN scores Keystone PAs Operators Who's Who Wildlife law
Methodology
Methodology architecture C-VAL validation matrix
14 tools and references
← Back
About

Canopy is a pan-African conservation intelligence and finance platform covering all 54 African countries and 200 key protected areas.

Built for funders, investors, operators, NGOs and governments who need to compare country risk, country conservation performance and protected area performance on the same basis before committing capital.

It does two things that are usually done apart. It is the measurement layer conservation M&E runs on, measuring what is actually happening on the ground, park by park, from orbit and from the record, with no self-reported data anywhere in it. And it sets that measurement against the money: what a country costs to protect, what it currently receives, and how risky it is to fund.

The underlying information is scattered across registries, government portals, satellite archives and specialist publications. Canopy gathers it, then adds its own measurement on top.

Founders

Tony Hansen. Tony has over 30 years of experience in advising and directing complex global programmes across conservation, sustainability, infrastructure, tourism, and high-impact events. In his most recent role, he was the Director of McKinsey's Natural Capital and Nature group. Core roles included helping companies on their net-zero and nature-positive transition and assisting governments in their design and implementation of the UN's Global Biodiversity Framework. Prior to this, he was the managing director of McKinsey's Global Infrastructure Initiative (GII), a community of the world's senior leaders in infrastructure who are committed to the pursuit of smart, resilient, and sustainable infrastructure. Before joining McKinsey, Tony worked as a management consultant and entrepreneur for more than 20 years. Tony is on the advisory board of Tompkins Conservation, a global conservation organisation that creates national parks, recovers imperilled wildlife, and promotes sustainable local communities.

Ralph Lazar. Ralph is a sovereign default risk specialist by background, formerly Fixed Income Proprietary Trading at CSFB, with the firm's own capital at risk, preceded by Global Economics & Strategy at Barings and Global Equity Strategy at Goldman Sachs. University of Cape Town (Law, Econ) and LSE (MSc Econ). His current professional interests are conservation, putting large data sets and LLMs to good use, and deep learning on satellite imagery.