Eco-Assets Marketplace

Both public value and private sector value can be realized within the environmental marketplace when facilities, operations or properties are managed so they clearly improve environmental quality.

Within the marketplace the costs of regulatory compliance are included as minimum investments (usually on the part of the private sector) that compensate society for use of natural capital belonging to all. Compliance payments are designed to recover social health & welfare costs stemming from private sector projects.

The marketplace -- based on both non-market and market-based values -- arises from the desire of government agencies to achieve greater-than-minimum compensation for impacts to ecosystem services. This promises that there will not be a net loss of environmental quality and, in most cases, an overall net gain is achieved.


The environmental marketplace has four main parts, representing:

• commodities / investment products (mitigation credits, allocations, certificates, etc.)
  
  
• government subsidies / tax-related values (direct payments, cost sharing, tax incentives)
  
  
• manufacturing / consumer goods (e.g., natural foods, non-toxic cleaners, eco-sensitive
  clothing, furnishings/garden products, renewable/reusable products)
  
  
• environmental/ecological management services (R&D, cost/risk management, bank
  and trade, brokerage & investment, insurance, etc.)

Each of these is addressed in the pages that follow, beginning with the Market Clinic.