[For a couple of different views:] http://www.ecosystemmarketplace.com/
http://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/pdf/briefing/24carboc.pdf ============================== http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/NEWS/0,,date:10-12-2004~menuPK:34461~pagePK:34392~piPK:34427~theSitePK:4607,00.html Natural Capital: Kyoto And The Carbon Marketplace The world's first multi-billion dollar green marketplace was launched today, aiming to connect buyers and sellers of a contentious - but likely lucrative - commodity, the environment, the Australian Associated Press reported Monday (10/11). The internet-based Ecosystem Marketplace is an online public forum, aiming to create a more efficient and transparent trade in environmental goods such as water rights and carbon credits, bringing together government agencies, communities and private enterprise from across the globe. The site, to be up and running by the end of this year, will feature the details of prominent transactions and developments in regulation and policy, including European Union and Kyoto Protocol emissions requirements. World Bank senior advisor on forest issues, David Cassells said the establishment of a central marketplace would help provide tangible income flows for developing countries, enabling them to sell environmental credit to first world industries. "We're very interested in the emergence of the marketplace...which will help mobilize sustainable capital for the people that really count," Cassells said. Last week's signing of the Kyoto protocol by Russia has put carbon credits - which companies can purchase to offset their greenhouse gas emissions (GGE) - at the top of every eco-trader's list, Jenkins said. Quoting research by Deutsche Bank he said carbon could become the largest commodity market in the world with an overall value of at least $US60 billion by 2008. "Russia's signing of the Kyoto protocol will put into effect a global trading system for our carbon," he said. In other environmental news, The Guardian (UK) reported on Saturday (10/09) that a project to assess the world's ecosystems has found that the widespread use of fertilizers and the burning of fossil fuels will severely damage life in lakes and rivers around the globe. The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, launched by the World Bank in Washington in 2001, examines how any disruption to the environment, whether by human action or natural events, will harm human health, food production and natural resources. Scientists have spent the past three years piecing together data from thousands of studies. Their official report will be published early next year, but a first draft shows a number of alarming trends. A major concern is the increase in nitrogen emissions because of fertilizer use and the burning of fossil fuels. "In the past 100 years, emissions have risen from around 20m tons a year to more than 150 million tons a year," said Robert Watson, the project leader and the World Bank's chief scientist. "We're emitting more than seven times more nitrogen and that is going to have incredible implications for ecological systems." As an ingredient in fertilizer, nitrogen helps to feed some 2 billion people. But when it is washed from soils into water courses it can make rivers and lakes too rich in nutrients. As a result, algae and other life can grow out of control, eventually stripping oxygen from the water which fish and other aquatic life need. Dead zones have already begun to appear, notably in the Gulf of Mexico, which is fed by nitrogen-rich water from the Mississippi river. "We are looking at major effects in the US, Europe and south-east Asia," Watson said.
