Ecosystem Marketplace

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The Ecosystem Marketplace is a leading source of news, data and analytics on markets and payments for ecosystem services (such as water quality, carbon sequestration and biodiversity). We believe that by providing unbiased information on policy, finance, regulation, science, business and other market-relevant factors, markets for ecosystem services will one day become a fundamental part of our economic system, helping give value to environmental services that, for too long, have been taken for granted. In providing reliable market information, we hope not only to facilitate transactions (thereby lowering transaction costs), but also to catalyze new thinking, spur the development of new markets, and achieve effective and equitable nature conservation. The Ecosystem marketplace is a project of Forest Trends.

Markets depend on transparent and reliable information to function. What is true for investors on Wall Street is equally true for environmental market players trading in carbon, water quality, and biodiversity.

Unfortunately, obtaining information for these markets can sometimes be exceedingly difficult. In many ways they resemble the Wall Street of the 1800s – with information closely guarded by those who profit from it – rather than the stock markets of today.

But markets grow and evolve, and they do so, in part, because of the transformative power of reliable and transparent information. This is the role of Ecosystem Marketplace.

• … Think Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal
• … Think Morningstar
• … Think of the kind of information the SEC requires.

Forest Trends’ Ecosystem Marketplace is the world's leading source of free information on markets and payments for ecosystem services. 

We cover:

CARBON

•  Kyoto-related carbon markets (EU ETS, CDM, JI)
• New South Wales GHG Reduction Scheme
• Chicago Climate Exchange
• Voluntary Over-the-Counter markets
• North American state and regional markets
• Payments for terrestrial carbon sequestration
  
  

WATER

• Water quality and nutrient trading
• Schemes to pay for watershed services

BIODIVERSITY

• Conservation banking in the U.S.
• Wetland/stream mitigation banking in the U.S.
• Australian biodiversity offset programs
• Voluntary biodiversity offsets

In providing useful information, we aim not only to facilitate transactions, but also to catalyze new thinking, spur the development of new markets, and achieve effective and equitable conservation of natural resources.

Our audiences, therefore, are many and include:

• Environment and community development NGOs
• Traders in environmental commodities
• Government regulators
• Businesses affected by environmental regulation
• Bankers and financiers
• Scientists and academics; and
• Low-income producers and community groups interested in participating in these markets.

All of these stakeholders need to be involved for environmental markets to reach their full potential.