Program Activities and Initiatives:
A) The Ecosystem MarketplaceSM
The Ecosystem MarketplaceSM is the place where providers and beneficiaries of ecosystem services get together to capture the value associated with ecosystem services. We provide a coordinated and informative platform for buyers and sellers of ecosystem services to meet and communicate. Furthermore, we improve the quality and value of ecosystem transactions by providing up-to-date information, news, and expertise. For more information on the Katoomba Group's Ecosystem Marketplace, go to www.ecosystemmarketplace.com.
The goals of this initiative are to:
- Democratize information about ecosystem service markets
- Encourage broad participation in policy dialogue about the rules and shape of ecosystem service payments
- Reduce learning costs for new entrants to these markets
- Reduce transaction costs associated with identifying buyers, sellers and service providers, state-of-the-art methodologies, and rules-of-the-game for particular markets.
- Link key players in these markets (buyers, sellers, intermediaries)
- Raise overall demand for and investment in ecosystem services by raising awareness of financial opportunities
B) Supporting Innovative Projects: Biodiversity Offset projects
Biodiversity offsets are the conservation actions intended to compensate for the residual, unavoidable harm to biodiversity caused by development projects, so as to ensure no net loss of biodiversity. Before developers contemplate offsets, they should have first sought to avoid and minimize harm to biodiversity. Forest Trends is planning a program on biodiversity offsets with 4-6 different pilot projects around the world. The pilot projects will explore the basis for establishing offsets and how to make them a success from the perspective of the developers, communities and government authorities involved, with input, where helpful, from ecologists, economists, NGOs and other experts. Issues to be explored include the basis of 'no net loss of biodiversity', habitat equivalence and the proximity of offsetting conservation activities to the development projects.
Since the success of an individual biodiversity offset will depend on its specific circumstances, we aim to work with our collaborators to design and implement a “portfolio” of several, contrasting offsets. P art of the pilot project program will be to prepare a comparative analysis of methodologies and guidelines on offsets, on which participants will be able to draw. Our vision is that biodiversity offsets will become a standard part of business practice for those companies with a significant impact on biodiversity.
For an overview presentation of our Biodiversity Offsets work by Kerry ten Kate and Mira Inbar, click here.
C) Katoomba Group Initiatives to Build Supportive Policy Environments for PES
In 1999, Forest Trends launched the Katoomba International Working Group on Markets for Ecosystem Services (The Katoomba Group), consisting of experts from forest and other industries, the finance community, and environmental NGOs. The Katoomba Group seeks to address key challenges for developing markets for ecosystem services, from enabling legislation to establishment of new market institutions, to strategies of pricing and marketing, and performance monitoring. It seeks to achieve that goal through strategic partnerships for analysis, information-sharing, investment, market services and policy advocacy.
We are currently organizing, with Katoomba Group partners, high-profile meetings to engage policymakers, other major “market makers,” and other stakeholders in dialogue about government legislation, regulation and other policies to develop ecosystem service market, and to “level the playing field” for equity purposes while these markets are in a critical design phase. These meetings should also help to raise the comfort level and understanding of PES among diverse stakeholders (environmental, business, communities). Focus over the next couple of years will be on Africa, China , and India. We will analyze and synthesize lessons from Katoomba Group project experience around the world for the design of supportive policy environments for PES.
Another of the activities is the development of “toolkits” for community actors. Based on our experience with pilot projects, broader experience in The Katoomba Group and materials gleaned from the Ecosystem Marketplace™ , we will develop a series of “toolkits” to assist diverse actors to engage effectively in PES projects, with a focus on low-income community sellers. These will include resource materials and tools for community carbon projects with biodiversity and other ecosystem co-benefits.
D) Forest Climate Alliance
The Forest Climate Alliance promotes climate policies and strategies that integrate goals of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change with the Convention to Combat Desertification, the Convention on Biological Diversity, and the Millennium Development Goals. We are developing policy briefs and targeted materials for Alliance members to use in advocating at international meetings and in national planning processes.
To learn more about this initiative, please read our brochure,
Clean Development Mechanism Forestry for Rural Poverty Reduction and Biodiversity Conservation: Making the CDM Work for Rural Communities.
We also invite you to review and comment on our letter to the delegates to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change For more information on the activities of the Ecosystem Services program, please contact: Mira Inbar (minbar@forest-trends.org ) |
