Oregon RC&D Conference
Redmond, Oregon
April 23, 2010
•  When the well is dry, we learn the
worth of water.
•  In the American West, water flows
uphill to money.
•  Used to measure in
pounds and acres and
gallons and board
feet: commodity
production
•  Now measure in years
and local jobs and
stable communities:
natural resources as
long-term assets
•  Originated with Australian
Landcare program
•  Taken up in Europe,
South Africa, Iceland,
Canada
•  Adopted in western U.S.
under Western Governors’
Association’s Policy
Resolution 09-11;
Montana’s Restore
Montana program;
Arizona’s Forest Health
Advisory and Oversight
Councils
•  Pioneer efforts in
watershed
management and
restoration
•  Forestry: restoration,
wildfire mitigation,
biomass utilization
•  Sustainable
agriculture, bioenergy, ecosystem
services transactions
Implementing irrigation efficiency (engineering, pipe
sales) 
Conservation/restoration revenue opportunities
(water “markets,” riparian restoration funding,
future hydro revenues) 
Sustainable ag practices (carbon, temperature,
salmon credits; reduced chemical inputs)
Expanding restoration economy (incentive $,
mitigation exchanges, water transactions, tourism
& recreation $) 
Improved long-term stability of human +
landscape systems
“Markets” developing
slowly: many “public
good” aspects + high
transaction costs +
fluctuating supply +
limited opportunities
for small landowners
Arguments currently
swirling:
–  Reallocation from
agricultural to urban
uses
–  Large economic losses
for areas of origin
–  Large hydrologic
effects caused by
interbasin trades
“Markets”: a possible
solution
MBIs and PES build
on local solutions
and development,
place-based values,
potential to benefit
whole communities
Importance of
transitional
institutions right
now
1. Collective engagement of all
rights-holders; attention to
preserving agricultural uses
while considering environmental
uses
2. Develop shared vision among
potential and current users
3. Identify demand as well as
supply
4. Understand how to measure
services, or market cannot work
Essential components:
–  Choice (time and $)
–  Engagement with landowners
(knowledge and aggregation)
–  Engagement with businesses
(profit lines)
–  Regulatory changes
(predictability)
–  Reducing risk (govt role?)
–  Monitoring as opportunity
(data analysis pods)
Whether “markets” develop or
not…
•  Brokerage: combining
restoration activities, working
with smaller acreages
–  Research: understanding the
market opportunities
–  Cooperative entrepreneurship:
combining the restoration
opportunity with funding options
•  Training:
–  ES auditors, ES project
designers, ES monitors,
restoration data analysts (pods of
geeks)
COMMODITY
% OF FARM INCOME
POTENTIAL CLIENT
Wheat
10%
World market
Timber
25%
World market
Potatoes
15%
Regional/local market
Carbon credits
15%
Steel company
Water filtration credits
20%
Urban water auth/utility
Biodiversity credit
5%
Philanthropic trust
Temperature credit
10%
Cost sharing, w’shed mgt
•  Ecosystem service
districts: linking
•  Landscape
labeling:
distinguishing
•  Restoration
monitoring
analysis:
integrating
•  Could provide an institutional
mechanism to help ensure natural
capital is maintained
•  Matches:
–  Local control with regional and
national networks
–  RCD goals and missions
–  Farm and watershed scale initiatives
–  Potential links w/Watershed Councils
–  Ecology + economics + ecosystem
services + legal issues involved in
managing ecosystems for the good of a
community
•  Information generator eg
compare cost of service
provision through natural and
built means
•  Coordinating function to
provide information exchange
among districts, highlight
conflicting activities
•  Land use powers or zoning
authority
•  Taxation authority to provide
funds to help allocate services
optimally through pricing
•  Identify, match, and map market mechanisms
with available ES + associated occupations
–  Strategic use of mapping and information tools for
planning and match with incentive programs
–  Jobs: assessors, consultants on strategic conservation,
designers and certifiers, earth movers, monitors,
analysts.
•  Link measures of ES to landholder actions
–  Quantify enviro benefits associated w/on ground work
 regional planning and targeting for scarce public
funds
–  Thus help ID other investors and clients who can
involve landowners who are not “strategically located”
•  Local rules regulate trade  landscape labeling
•  Local communities linked to global communities; local equity
important
•  Local co-operatives, global partnerships and collaborations
•  Local groupings recognize the need to share experiences and
solutions
1. Combining PES with
product labeling based on
delivering/protecting ES
2. Deliver benefits of PES
through social and
infrastructural
investments
3. Develop a nationally/
internationally
recognizable format for
verifying ES provision
•  Design market
mechanisms that
encourage investment of
all kinds in natural
resource management
•  Link ecosystem service
production with willing
investors = local and
global marketing
•  Potential product
premiums
•  Ecological benefits:
–  Manage at a landscape level
–  Consider suites of ecosystem
services
–  Engage landowners in
broader goals
•  Social benefits:
–  Reduce transaction costs
–  Improve inclusiveness
–  Allow flexibility around
changing markets
–  Social pressure to limit freeriding
–  Fits with truffle, trail projects
•  Distributed networks of
information, local to
global
•  Locally-based knowledge
development in the field,
feeds into verification
systems
•  Fits with energy analysis
and tourism development
•  Dual meaning: biophysical systems + human
systems, communities create and change
•  ESD and landscape labeling are communitybased concepts
•  Opportunities abound for defining how a
community wants to market its available
Ecosystem Services
sally.duncan@oregonstate.edu
Institute for Natural Resources
541 737 9931