The Ecosystem Marketplace seeks to become the world’s leading source of information on markets and payment schemes for ecosystem services; services such as water quality, carbon sequestration and biodiversity. We believe that by providing solid and trust-worthy information on prices, regulation, science, and other market-relevant issues, markets for ecosystem services will one day become a fundamental part of our economic and environmental system, helping give value to environmental services that have, for too long, been taken for granted.
But markets—and environmental markets in particular—do not run on will alone. They require sound policy, strong science, and most of all, timely and transparent information. For markets to work, people need to know they exist, and participants need to see, with clarity and ease, who is buying, who is selling, and at what price. There also needs to be a clear understanding of the policy changes that drive these markets, as well as the science that underpins them.

That is what this service, this Ecosystem Marketplace, is all about. We seek to become a one-stop-shop of timely and transparent information on the emerging markets and payment schemes for ecosystem services. We will cover information that is so essential to the proper functioning of any market: prices, transactions, how the services are measured, packaged and sold, as well as the location of buyers and sellers. Additionally, we will be convening policy change that affects these schemes and the impact of these markets on the ecosystems themselves and on low-income producers and community groups in developing countries.