Regulating Markets for Ecosystem Services

An international interdisciplinary conference on regulatory and institutional frameworks for markets for ecosystems services will be held at the School of Law, University of Surrey on 6-7 June 2012. The goal of the conference is to "enable outcome-oriented interaction between experts, innovators, and front-end users of these evolving market models to learn about recent progress, what strategies can be adopted to encourage cross-learning between different models for regulatory and institutional frameworks, and how to design new institutional and regulatory mechanisms that can help preserve ecosystem services."

Themes of the conference will include:

•Critiques of the latest concepts in developing markets for ecosystem services;

•Examination of international case studies on markets involving ecosystem assets and services;

•The consideration of questions regarding appropriate avenues of public participation in the design and operation of markets for ecosystems services;

•Identification of potential partners and investments associated with emerging markets for carbon, water management and biodiversity habitat;

•Considerations of the role of legitimacy, accountability and equity in institutional and regulatory design

•Proposals for new legislative or regulatory mechanisms that would place a price on ecosystems services and provide payments to preserve those services

•Identification of methodologies that highlight institutional and policy lock-ins that prevent markets in ecosystems services from working efficiently and equitably and suggestions for strategies for unpicking those lock-ins.

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