Biodiversity

Payments for conserving biodiversity often come from nongovernmental organizations that have biodiversity objectives. Other interests include the ecotourism and pharmaceutical industries, whose payments secure access to biodiversity hotspots. The development of market-based instruments is challenging and nebulous, largely due to a lack of buyers and financial investment as well as the difficulty in defining biodiversity units of measure. In some cases regulatory frameworks have mobilized market transactions; the emergence of conservation banking in the US, for example, may give private landowners a new incentive to manage forests and conserve critical habitat.

Feature Publications

• Building Biodiversity Business (Bishop et al. 2008)( PDF, 4.5 MB)
• Conservation and Biodiversity Banking: A Guide to Setting Up and Running Biodiversity Credit Trading Systems (Carroll, Fox, and Bayon [eds.] 2008)
• Characteristics of Existing Federal Conservation Banks (Maillet and Simon 2007)( PDF, 130 KB)
• The Use of Market Incentives to Preserve Biodiversity (Bräuer et al. 2006)
• Status of Species Conservation Banking in the United States (Fox and Nino-Murcia 2005)
• A Practical Guide to Habitat Conservation Banking Law and Policy (Ruhl, Glen, and Hartman 2005)( PDF, 290 KB)
• Markets for Biodiversity Services: Potential Roles and Challenges (Jenkins, Scherr, and Inbar 2004)( PDF, 0.7 MB)
• Handbook of Market Creation for Biodiversity: Issues in Implementation, Executive Summary (The OECD Environment Programme)( PDF, 30 KB)
• Economic value of tropical forest to coffee production (Ricketts et al. 2004)( PDF, 0.3 MB)
• US Department of the Interior, Fish and Wildlife Service, Guidance for the Establishment, Use, and Operation of  Conservation Banks (2003)
• Harnessing Markets for Biodiversity Towards Conservation and Sustainable Use (Biller 2003)
• Mitigation Banking as an Endangered Species Conservation Tool (Environmental Defense 1999)( PDF, 224 KB)
• Economic and Environmental Benefits of Biodiversity (Pimentel et al. 1997)

Helpful Websites

• Millennium Ecosystem Assessment
• Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund
• California Department of Fish & Game: conservation and mitigation banking
• A catalogue of conservation banks in California: Innovative tools for natural resource management
• BBOP: Business and Biodiversity Offsets Program