Markets for ecosystem services are being promoted across the developing world, amidst claims that the provision of economic incentives is vital to bring about resource conservation. This article argues that equity and legitimacy are also critical dimensions in the design and implementation of such markets, if social development goals beyond economic gains are to be achieved. The article examines this issue by focusing on two communities involved in a project for carbon sequestration services of forests in the state of Chiapas, Mexico.

Joseph Wright and Helene Muller-Landau suggest that regeneration of tropical forests might lead to far less species loss than is feared by most tropical biologists (12 May, p 42). There is currently very little reason to think so.

The Comprehensive Assessment of Water Management in Agriculture is a critical evaluation of the benefits, costs, and impacts of the past 50 years of water development, the water management challenges communities face today, and the solutions people have developed around the world.

This report identifies ecosystem services and stakeholders and determines spatio-temporal dimensions of the identified services. It documents past and present trends of resource utilization in various forest types. It also documents functional attributes of different forest types including biotic stresses.

The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) is a ground-breaking study on how humans have altered ecosystems, and how changes in ecosystem services affect human well-being, both now and in the future. Integrating findings at the local, regional, global scales and from alternative intellectual traditions, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment presents a stark account of the mismanagement of these services. Using the assessment as its backdrop, "Restoring Nature's Capital' proposes an action agenda for business, governments, and civil society to reverse ecosystem degradation.

Human-dominated marine ecosystems are experiencing accelerating loss of populations and species, with largely unknown consequences. We analyzed local experiments, long-term regional time series, and global fisheries data to test how biodiversity loss affects marine ecosystem services across temporal and spatial scales. Overall, rates of resource collapse increased and recovery potential, stability, and water quality decreased exponentially with declining diversity. Restoration of biodiversity, in contrast, increased productivity fourfold and decreased variability by 21%, on average.

At a 31 October gathering of tsunami donors at the United Nations, the World Conservation Union (IUCN) and the U.N. Development Programme are planning to unveil a 6-year, $62 million initiative called Mangroves for the Future (MFF). It's goal is to rehabilitate ecosystems in 12 tsunami hit nations.

This study quantifies the tangible, economic benefits of a nongovernmental organization's social forestry project to local people and analyzes the potential return from this investment in natural capital. The analysis was conducted in the Kumaun hill region of Uttaranchal, India, using participatory rapid appraisal, household survey, avoided cost method, and present value investment analysis.

Land degradation is as a result of broad range of scales and factors, which include biophysical, climatic, demographic and socio-economic. The aim of this paper was to provide an analysis of wetland utilisation, ecosystem degradation and their effect on the Lake Victoria (Kenya) ecosystem. This involved analysis of socioeconomic and remote sensed data. The main sources of wetland degradation in the Lake Victoria basin were identified as (1) farming activities, (2) grazing and macrophyte harvesting and (3) coupled with catchment degradation-deforestation.

An empirical measure of the value of forests

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