A Workshop on

Environmental Credits Generated Through Land-Use Changes:

Challenges and Approaches

March 8-9, 2006 -- Baltimore, Maryland

Hyatt Regency Hotel

Sponsored by:

Texas A&M U., Department of Agricultural Economics

The Environmental Trading Network

Environmental Defense Climate and Air Program

(Final Agenda & Presentation Slides)

(Speaker Biographies)

A workshop on the environmental credits generated through land-use changes was held March 8-9, 2006 in Baltimore, Maryland. Focusing primarily on carbon sequestration and nutrient run-off reductions, the workshop looked at common challenges that must be addressed by any program that seeks to achieve its environmental goals by using market-based incentives to encourage changes in land management practices. Specific challenges include:

  • Uncertainty in measurement and quantification;

  • Uncertainty that arises because of natural variation over time;

  • Difficulty of monitoring and verifying credits;

  • Establishing baselines and determining whether credits represent additional environmental benefits;

  • Difficulties that arise when credits are given for environmental benefits that are not permanent;

  • Leakage that can occur if market forces lead to changes in land management that offset the environmental benefits being sought;

  • Aggregating credits from many agricultural producers for sale to large buyers; and

  • Transaction costs that limit market efficiency.

The Land-Based Environmental Credits Workshop dedicated time to each of these issues with presentations by experts that have dealt with these problems and found practical ways to address them.

Jointly sponsored by Texas A&M, The Environmental Trading Network and Environmental Defense, with funding from US EPA, this one-and-a-half day workshop targeted stakeholders, practitioners, policy makers, and analysts. A main goal of the workshop was to bring together those facing such issues in both greenhouse gas/carbon sequestration and water quality settings to learn from each other about approaches that might be taken to overcome these challenges. A distinguished set of speakers were used to introduce topics and share the latest thinking on these issues.

For more information contact Richard Woodward at

r-woodward@tamu.edu, 979-845-5864.

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