The Ecosystem Marketplace provides sources of information on markets and payment schemes for ecosystem services; services such as water quality, carbon sequestration and biodiversity. The website has a section for:news, opinions, tools, people in the sector, programme and organisational directory and events.
Some of the issues surrounding markets and payment schemes include.
- carbon-related schemes, such as the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) and Kyoto related carbon markets (Clean Development Mechanism, Joint Implementation, etc.)
- water-related markets and schemes such as nutrient trading and TMDL markets in the US and the Payment for Watershed services scheme in Mexico
- biodiversity-related schemes, such as conservation Banking in the US and voluntary Biodiversity offsets
- other conservation transactions such as conservation reserve programmes and direct payments for conservation