EKO ECO Guest Blogger: Archive
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Investors Weigh in on Water Quality Trading, Cardin Bill
June 11, 2010 Comment
By Whitt Kelly, Intern Ecosystem Marketplace In recent months, Senator Cardin introduced senate bill S.1816, the Chesapeake Clean Water and Ecosystem Restoration Act of 2009. At its core this bill reauthorizes the Chesapeake Bay Program (by amending the Clean Water...
Talking Tenure: Challenges for Real World PES
April 23, 2010 Comment
By Kelly Moore Brands, Carbon & Biodiversity Research Assistant, Ecosystem Marketplace Last week at the Biodiversity and Forestry Seminar Series held at the USAID offices here in Washington, Drs. Lisa Naughton and Matthew Turner of the University of Wisconsin's Land Tenure Center (LTC) (my alma mater, go Badgers!), spoke on tenure issues in the context of payments for ecosystem services (PES) projects - in particular, those projects in rural poor areas.
In Defense of Ecourbanism
April 14, 2010 Comment
What do you do when urban development turns a pristine wetland into a concrete jungle (Washington D.C., sound familiar?)? Over the years, cities have paved over paradise and made not only parking lots, but apartment buildings, grocery and retail stores, office buildings and basketball courts.
In Defense of Offsets
November 27, 2009 1 Comment
"Paying more for flights eases guilt, not emissions." This catchy title of a recent New York Times article reflects the stance of many organizations that recently decided to scrap programs offering carbon offsets for travel-related emissions. Responsible Travel, Yahoo, and the US House of Representatives are just a few groups that have terminated offset-purchase programs this year, determining that their money was better spent on in-house reduction efforts.
Dialogue on Forests: Talking the Talk
November 12, 2009 Comment
By: Kelly Moore Brands, Biodiversity Research Assistant for Ecosystem Marketplace A few weeks ago, the second Dialogue on Forests, Governance & Climate Change hosted by Chatham House, the Rights and Resources Initiative and World Resources Institute was held in Washington, D.C. The conference focused on policies for improving forest governance, including lessons learned from the UNFCCC negotiations, and particularly on REDD initiatives and how they might be affected by US climate policy.
Voluntary Carbon Meets Big Business
October 1, 2009 Comment
Last week, representatives from EcoSeucrities, ClimateBiz, and Baker and McKenzie met in New York for the launch of The Carbon Management and Offsetting Trends Survey 2009. The publicly available report surveyed corporate offset buyers for an insider's look at attitudes towards the voluntary carbon market. Sound familiar? Ecosystem Marketplace's annual report State of the Voluntary Carbon Markets, produced in partnership with New Carbon Finance, asks some of the same questions to the supply (rather than demand) side of the market. To find out if buyers and sellers are singing the same tune, we decided to compare the two reports.
New Study: Willingness to Pay for Offsets
September 17, 2009 Comment
How much are you willing to cough up to offset harmful emissions from air travel? And what can policymakers do to make you pay more? Call me a nerd, but these questions have plagued me for months. After many hours of reading, writing, and number crunching, I am pleased to put forward my best responses in the form of my Economics Thesis from Barnard College, Columbia University: "Willingness to Pay for Opt-In Offsets in the Voluntary Carbon Market."
Water quality markets: a slippery slope towards carbon trading?
September 4, 2009 Comment
The Ohio River Basin Trading Pilot Project, managed by the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), held its third quarter webcast last month. The publicly available webcast covered a whole slew of updates, from an overview of WARMF modeling to project funding developments. One such update turned quite a few heads: EPRI's progress towards using a water quality market to also generate voluntary carbon credits.
Looking Ahead: A Busy Fall for Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) and Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) in Latin America
August 26, 2009 Comment
By: Tommie Herbert and Hannah Murray, Tropical America Katoomba Group This fall, professionals in PES and REDD are headed south. From across the globe practitioners and policymakers in environmental markets are booking flights to Colombia, Costa Rica, Argentina, Bolivia, and...
Agriculture Takes Center Stage in Australia's Climate Bill
July 31, 2009 Comment
The leader of Australia's opposition party recently announced that his party would not vote for an Emissions Trading Scheme in which the agricultural sector is regulated, arguing that the carbon sequestration potential of Australia's land mass is its greatest strength in combating rising CO2 emissions. The Rudd Government's current proposal includes agriculture as a covered sector.
175: A Lucky Number for Waxman-Markey?
July 29, 2009 1 Comment