New Strategies Create an Environmental Marketplace for Conservation

Environmental Markets Trends Report published by Business for Social Responsibility is a downloadable PDF that provides compelling reasons for sustainable business practices.

Companies rely on environmental services for the most fundamental aspects of their operations, including raw materials, predictable flows of clean water and carbon sequestration. The environment also provides other less noted, free services such as pest control and protection from severe storms and disease....We expect that there will be sufficient clean water for operations, that raw materials will continue to flow in predictable patterns, that transport will not be unduly interrupted by increases extreme weather and that our workers will have healthy air to breathe.

Market mechanisms programs to protect environmental services promises new business approaches to these issues. Efforts already underway are pricing environmental services, based upon the value they represent to corporations, communities and individuals.

The Carbon market is projected to be the largest commodity market in the world. There is a growing theory in scientific and environmental communities that these market mechanisms are here to stay, and a new way of doing business.

The idea of applying market mechanisms to environmental problems began in the U.S. in the early 1990s. A cap-and-trade system was set up under the U.S. Clean Air Act that allowed for trading in pollutant allowances of sulfur dioxide, one of the gases responsible for acid rain. Today, a wide variety of policy tools have been developed for help markets and the global economy move toward the conservation of environmental services. "Payments for environmental services" (PES) is an umbrella term for the entire range of economic incentive schemes. Some examples include:

Sources to learn more about mitigation markets are:

Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) is a greenhouse gas emission reduction and trading pilot program for emission sources and offset projects in the United States, Canada and Mexico.

Compliance markets for environmental services are driven by regulatory requirements that often take the form of a cap on environmental degradation. The European Union Emissions Trading Scheme and the Kyoto Protocol both started in 2005 as global compliance carbon markets. In the U.S., wetlands mitigation banking is estimated to be worth $1 billion per year—with more than 400 established banks in 40 states.


CALIFORNIA RESOURCES:
California Department of Fish and Game
Habitat Conservation Planning Branch


The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, working with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the California Department of Fish and Game evaluates the habitats and assigns a certain number of "credits" to them. The developer sells these credits to builders or government agencies like the Corps to offset the effects of construction projects.

Wildlands, Inc., is one of the first wetland mitigation banks and conservation banks that protect wildlife habitat in perpetuity.

Ecosystem Marketplace
Look up "California" for a wide variety of program and organization resources available for mitigation investments.

Millenium Ecosystem Assessment

Green Facts