Published April 7, 2023 | Version v1
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Governing high-integrity ecosystem markets

Description

There is growing interest in the potential for ecosystem markets to facilitate climate and nature recovery, but there are concerns that poorly designed and operated markets may be used in corporate "greenwashing" and lead to negative unintended consequences for nature and local communities.

This paper:
1. Provides an overview of compliance and voluntary carbon and other ecosystem markets and systematically analyses relevant market actors in the UK, a country with well-developed and rapidly proliferating domestic markets that is actively seeking to increase their integrity;
2. Conducts a comparative analysis of existing national and international principles and synthesises a list of 14 core principles pertaining to the governance, measurement, reporting and verification, and wider benefits of high-integrity ecosystem markets; and
3. Develops an ecosystem markets governance hierarchy, showing the various policy, governance and market mechanisms and infrastructure that are being explored to implement the proposed principles in the UK.

Taken together, the core market principles and governance hierarchy could be used to ensure the development of high-integrity ecosystem markets across the UK and internationally, as national governments around the world attempt to responsibly build and scale these markets.

This publication is supported by the WET HORIZONS project

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Additional details

Funding

WET HORIZONS – WET HORIZONS - upgrading knowledge and solutions to fast-track wetland restoration across Europe 101056848
European Commission