Number of tree seedlings grown for 10 years

The market continues to grow with nearly $888 million being committed in 2015 alone, according to Ecosystem Marketplace’s most recent State of Forest Carbon Finance report. Forest carbon offset sales in North America totaled $74.5 million in 2015, with $11.3 million of those sales through voluntary markets and $63.2 million through compliance markets, mostly driven by California’s cap and trade program.

North America

In North America, biodiversity offset and compensation programs are well-developed, particularly the US wetland and species compensation programs and Canada’s fish habitat compensation program. In total there are 14 active programs and 5 in development in North America. The region sees a minimum of $1.5-$2.5 billion in compensation payments per annum. This region also hosts the most offset credit banks of any region in the world. The United States has seven active programs and three in development. Payments total $1.5-$2.4 billion annually. Around 700,000 cumulative acres (283,280 hectares) have been restored or protected through US programs. The two largest offsetting programs, wetland and species mitigation, offer three mechanisms for achieving compensation: do it yourself, pay into a fund, or buy a third-party credit. Within this third form of offset credit baking there are 615 active and sold-out banks in the country

Last year, the US Department of Agriculture’s Office of Environmental Markets, together with Ecosystem Marketplace publisher Forest Trends and the Environmental Protection Agency, published an online Atlas of Ecosystem Markets, which you can access here. 8.   The Jobs are Robot-Proof Environmental regulations didn’t kill coal; natural gas and renewables did. Regulations didn’t stifle the western oil boom, either; that was low energy prices. Even if Trump & Co do prop the coal sector, jobs won’t go to people; they’ll go to machines, which took most of the jobs America lost in the last decade. BenDor’s research shows restoration jobs are evenly divided between white-collar planners, designers, and engineers and the green-collar guys doing the actual earth moving and site construction. Almost all involve time in the great outdoors, and they can’t be exported or done by robots. 9.   The Jobs are Cost-Effective Because restoration work is labor-intensive, the money goes to people instead of machines, and every $1 million invested generates 33 jobs on average. Every $1 million invested in oil, on the other hand, generates 5.2 jobs per $1 million invested. In coal, the figure is 6.9 jobs. 10.  It Doesn’t Stifle Business Some industry groups claim the Endangered Species Act blocks development, but researchers reviewed 88,000 consultations between 2008 and 2015 and found that no projects had been stopped or even changed in a major way to protect habitat. Even proponents of the system concede, however, that the permitting process is slow and tedious. 11.  It Can Be Improved While the FWS administers credits for mitigation of endangered species, the Army Corps of Engineers approves mitigation credits for streams and wetlands, and they’re notoriously underfunded. This leads to long and costly delays, according to unpublished research that BenDor conducted with Daniel Spethmann of Working Lands Investment Partners and David Urban of Ecosystem Investment Partners. Delays are so costly, they argue, that companies in the restoration sector might be better off paying 50-fold higher permitting prices that would give the agencies the staff needed to properly process permits, akin to expedited building permits, rather than paying banks the interest on loans for land where environmental improvements are being held up. ← Ecosystem Marketplace Home Page

In 2008, EPA and the Corps issued revised regulations governing compensatory mitigation.12 These regulations established equivalent and effective standards for all three compensatory mitigation mechanisms: mitigation banks, in-lieu fee mitigation, and permittee-responsible mitigation. Since mitigation banking is the most reliable form of compensatory mitigation, these regulations establish a preference for the use of banks when appropriate credits are available.

The federal income tax benefits of donating a properly structured conservation easement are similar to other gifts of land, but were recently enhanced by Congress in 2015 to encourage more landowners to use this effective land protection tool.²  The new law allows the landowner to take a deduction for the value of the donated easement up to 50% of the donor's adjusted gross income for the year of the donation.  For qualifying farmers or ranchers who receive more than 50% of their gross income from the trade or business of farming, the deduction limit is increased to 100% of adjusted gross income.  If the deduction amount exceeds these limits, the donor may carry over the balance of the deduction for up to 15 succeeding years.