General Payment for Ecosystem Services: Archive
From Mangroves to Blue Carbon-Harnessing New Investment in Marine and Coastal Ecosystems
February 10, 2010 Comment
This latest Katoomba Meeting XVI, in Palo Alto, California is focused on "Building a Blueprint to Harness New Investment for the Protection of Marine and Coastal Ecosystem Services."
Mapping REDD Risks and Rewards: the Forest Carbon Index
December 6, 2009 Comment
A picture is worth a thousand words, and Resources for the Future's (RFF) new Forest Carbon Index (FCI) uses interactive maps to tell a visual story of forest carbon's global investment potential. Pretty useful stuff, considering that forest carbon's profit potential, stocks and policy hurdles are - like forest resources themselves - entirely place-based.
When is Multi-Credit Banking a Double Dip???
November 17, 2009 8 Comments
Businessmen seek to maximize their earnings, often by harvesting several income streams from one asset - a strategy that only works if end-users see value in the multitude of products coming at them from one source. Some US states say restored wetlands generate extra value if they also reduce runoff into local waterways, and should earn credits for that. Environmentalists, however, say that's double-dipping at the cost of the environment. The two sides are colliding this week in North Carolina.
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.
Can peat turn REDD in Copenhagen?
November 6, 2009 1 Comment
Destruction of peatland accounts for up to 50% of Indonesia's greenhouse gas emissions, and was a central theme at a recent conference sponsored by Germany's Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (Society for Technical Cooperation, GTZ). EM's Unna Chokkalingam attended the event, and filed this report.
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...
Article Summary: Protecting Ecosystem Services and Biodiversity in the World's Watersheds
August 24, 2009 Comment
Gary W. Luck, Kai M.A. Chan, John P. Fay. Conservation Letters, Vol 2, issue 4, August 2009, p. 179-188. Accessed online in August 2009. Where do watersheds of global importance for biodiversity (Hotspots, Global 200 ecoregions, or endemic bird areas)...
Article Summary: Why Bartering Biodiversity Fails
August 20, 2009 Comment
Article Summary: Ecosystem Services and Conservation Strategy: Beware the Silver Bullet
August 18, 2009 Comment
What Makes Ecosystem Markets Work?
July 16, 2009 Comment
Of the Bees and the Birds...
July 7, 2009 2 Comments
These are a few of my favorite blogs...
June 18, 2009 Comment