Integrating ecosystem markets to co-ordinate landscape-scale public benefits from nature

Abstract

Ecosystem markets are proliferating around the world in response to increasing demand for climate change mitigation and provision of other public goods. However, this may lead to perverse outcomes, for example where public funding crowds out private investment or different schemes create trade-offs between the ecosystem services they each target. The integration of ecosystem markets could address some of these issues but to date there have been few attempts to do this, and there is limited understanding of either the opportunities or barriers to such integration. This paper reports on a comparative analysis of eleven ecosystem markets in operation or close to market in Europe, based on qualitative analysis of 25 interviews, scheme documentation and two focus groups. Our results indicate three distinct types of markets operating from the regional to national scale, based on modes of operation, funding and outcomes: regional ecosystem markets, national carbon markets and green finance. The typology provides new insights into the operation of ecosystem markets in practice, which may challenge traditionally held notions of Payment for Ecosystem Services. Regional ecosystem markets, in particular, represent a departure from traditional models, by using a risk-based funding model and aggregating both supply and demand to overcome issues of free-riding, ecosystem service trade-offs and land manager engagement. Central to all types of market were trusted intermediaries, brokers and platforms to aggregate supply and demand, build trust and lower transaction costs. The paper proposes five options for integrating public and private funding for the provision of ecosystem services and proposes a framework for integrating national carbon markets and green finance with regional ecosystem markets. Such integration may significantly increase funding for regenerative agriculture and conservation across multiple habitats and services, whilst addressing issues of additionality and ecosystem service trade-offs between competing schemes.

Renewable Energy Utilization and Environmental Pollution Control in the New City Area Mamminasata Metropolitan, Indonesia

“…These results confirm that the increase in development activities that tend to increase from time to time has an impact on increasing the burden of environmental pollution in the direction of ecosystem imbalance. Thus, it is very important to anticipate climate change and adapt to natural disaster mitigation which is integrated with improving the quality of the environment and human development (Li and Xu, 2021;Reed et al, 2022). The facts found in the field illustrate that very intensive development activities are accompanied by conversion of agricultural land, utilization of water catchment areas, low public awareness, and high population mobility to activity centers and environmental imbalance due to limited open space and its impact on environmental degradation in the Mamminasata Metropolitan new city area.…”

Impact Culture: Transforming How Universities Tackle Twenty First Century Challenges

“…Rather than expecting all researchers to engage with impact, there is room for pure, basic, and non-applied research, which has no obvious impact, alongside more applied, actionoriented research designed explicitly to tackle societal challenges, with researchers drawn to impact on their own terms, as opportunities intersect with their interests and values. While extrinsic incentives, in the form of research funding and impact assessments, have increasingly driven engagement with impact around the world (Reed et al, 2020), it has also driven negative unintended consequences, as outlined in the Background section. An approach that seeks to build more on the diverse intrinsic motivations of researchers may be slower to affect behavior change.…”

“…While this might typically refer to institutional and disciplinary networks, it is possible to create bonding capital within diverse communities of interest; 2. Researchers can take on the role of "bridging" connections if they are able to build trusting relationships with key individuals in very different networks who would not normally interact with each other, e.g., Neumann (2021) and Reed et al (2020) showed how researchers played particularly important bridging roles between members of the research, business, charity, and policy communities in UK and German peatland governance bodies. 3.…”

Traps, apps and maps: to what extent do they provide decision-grade data on biodiversity?

“…by reducing water treatment costs), and contribute towards corporate sustainability goals (Vidal et al, 2010;Esteves et al, 2012). Broadly speaking, private investment in nature occurs via carbon markets (including international compliance and voluntary markets as well as domestic carbon markets), wider ecosystem markets (including regional ecosystem markets and national payment for ecosystem service schemes) and green finance mechanisms (including green bonds, insurance products and habitat banking) (Reed et al, 2022). Nature has become an investable asset, as part of a connected economic system and natural world (Dasgupta, 2021), and investment has the potential to ensure that natural capital is not driven below critical thresholds, and flows of ecosystem services can regenerate (Green Finance Institute, 2021).…”

“…There are significant challenges in delivering biodiversity targets and emission reductions in the land use sector, where it is estimated that it may cost £247 million to deliver net zero targets (Committee on Climate Change, 2019Change, , 2020. This funding gap is likely to increase as Governments respond to the economic impacts of the COVID pandemic, and in the UK land use sector, the gap may be further widened by post-Brexit agricultural policies, which will lead to an overall reduction in public funding for the sector by 2027 (Reed et al, 2022).…”