An interesting New Yorker article on pricing in our Internet era.

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2009/07/06/090706crbo_books_gladwell?currentPage=all

It opens the discussion for the economy of new ecosystem service credits….credits represent environmental ’stuff’…and our society has a scarcity of the environmental ’stuff’ we need to restore Earth’s atmosphere. What is the best model to reap the greatest ’social willingness’ to participate in credit markets?

Many times over the past few years I’ve referred to our land use and environmental work in terms of their improvements to health and livelihood of communities. We have never methodically developed indicators or measures of “healthy, sustainable livelihood”…but think it is critically important.

Attached is a white paper that begins to take the issues apart and structure some approaches.

This is enormously important to the future of carbon markets and conservation finance. Without measures of social well-being we are lost.

http://www.ids.ac.uk/ids/bookshop/wp/wp72.pdf

In 2005, a number of forest professionals in Massachusetts develop a statewide (and eventually regional-wide) vision for forest protection and management. It is interesting in 1) it’s analysis of forest issues at the urban, suburban, and rural levels, and 2) it’s approach of innovative partnerships and economic mechanisms.

http://www.wildlandsandwoodlands.org/index.html

This morning on NPR there was a report on today’s field bird (grouse, quail, partridge…) hunting day in England. Evidently a LOT of hunters go to these reserves on August 12th each year….the example being a group of 20 might well go out and kill 300 birds. The fee structure is around $200 each bird, so these twenty folks are spending $60k for the days hunt!

A little over two years ago, the University of Rhode Island and EAM began a project to experiment with a community-based market supporting bobolink habitat preservation on farm fields in southern Rhode Island. Our goals were both farmland conservation and economic analysis to determine more precisely willingness-to-pay for farm management practices that improve wildlife habitat.

Initial results have been encouraging, we’ve been able to protect several fields over the first two years (I’ll have more to say about the economic analysis as the Summer progresses, but intially we’ve found about 10% of the community willing to participate).

I start with this post because we’ve gotten significant press on the project and yesterday I became aware of a group in Minnesota who had implemented an exchange.

http://www.stillwatergazette.com/articles/2008/06/09/news/news510.txt

Here is the Audubon Magazine article on the project….more information to come as we analyze economic data…

Audubon Magazine Article