Environmental Credits
Generated Through Land-Use Changes:
Challenges and Approaches
March 8-9, 2006 -- Baltimore, Maryland
Sponsored by:
Texas A&M U., Department of Agricultural Economics, The Environmental Trading Network
and 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, or 979-845-5864.
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Wednesday, March 8 |
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Overview and Introduction |
8:45 Introduction to conference 9:00 Overview of trading and the challenges of land-based credits (Woodward & McCarl, Slides) 9:45 The state of trading - water quality Trading (10 min. for dicussion) (Mark Kieser, Slides) 10:45 The state of trading - carbon markets (10 min. for dicussion) (Zack Willey, Slides) |
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Quantification and units |
Each "challenge session" will be introduced and moderated by one of the organizers. The introduction will give a 5 minute discussion of the issue in general. Each session will close with 15 minutes of discussion for Q&A. 1:00 Challenge
# 1: Baselines and additionality (Woodward, Slides) 2:00 Challenge
# 2: Leakage and permanence (McCarl, Slides) 3:15
Challenge # 3: Measurement and quantity uncertainty (McCarl, Slides) 4:15 Challenge
# 4: Monitoring and verification (Woodward, Slides) |
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Thursday, March 9 |
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Market Challenges |
8:30 Challenge
# 5: Transaction costs (Woodward, Slides) 9:30 Challenge
#6: Aggregation (McCarl, Slides) |
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Conclusions and discussions |
10:45 Directed discussion and Q&A (Led by members of planning team with participation of speakers and workshop participants) 12:00 Closing remarks |
WORKSHOP ORGANIZERS
Mark Kieser is Senior Scientist at Kieser & Associates of Kalamazoo, Michigan and is Acting Chair of the Environmental Trading Network. He work involves advising state and local governments in developing water quality policies. In his capacity with the ETN, Kieser has played a central role in developing WQ trading programs across the nation.
Bruce McCarl is a Professor in the Department of Agricultural Economics and Texas A&M. He is is an internationally recognized expert in the study of the economics of carbon sequestration having written on the subject since 1990. He has worked heavily in conjunction with the EPA Non-CO2 Gases and Sequestration Branch in appraising agricultural and forestry consequences of greenhouse gas policy and trading.
W.R. Zach Willey is an economist in the Global and Regional Air Program at Environmental Defense. He has been instrumental in defining Environmental Defense's position as a leading advocate of using market based approaches to addressing the problem of climate change. He led the development of a book on Terrestrial GHG Offset Manual the economics of climate mitigation, which was accompanied by a conference in Washington D.C. in the Fall of 2004.
Richard Woodward is an Associate Professor in the Department of Agricultural Economics and Texas A&M. He is an expert in the use of transferable rights for water quality. He has numerous publications on this emerging issue and was a principal investigator on an interdisciplinary study of effluent trading for the State of Texas.
INVITED SPEAKERS
Kenneth Andrasko is senior sequestration expert, Climate Change Division, US Environmental Protection Agency. He has worked on climate, agricultural and forestry analysis and project methods since 1989. Recently he was co-author of an EPA report on Greenhouse Gas Mitigation Potential in U.S. Forestry and Agriculture and of a major report on sequestration in Russia by World Resources Institute.
Michael Ashford is Deputy Director of The Climate Trust, a leading non-profit organization dedicated to providing solutions to climate stabilization. The Climate Trust's mission is to promote climate change solutions by providing high quality greenhouse gas offset projects and advancing sound offset policy. Michael shares responsibilities for oversight of offset project acquisitions, project portfolio management, organizational development, and strategic planning.
Wiley Barbour is the Executive Director of Environmental Resources Trust, where he is focused on developing the infrastructure for a robust greenhouse gas emissions trading market by providing independent registry services. Mr. Barbour has over 14 years of experience working as an air pollution engineer, climate and energy policy analyst, and greenhouse gas emissions estimation specialist.
Sandra Brown is senior scientist in the Ecosystem Services Unit of Winrock International. She has more than 25 years of experience in planning, developing, implementing, and managing public and private-sector-funded projects focusing on forests and their relation to climate change and mitigation, resulting in more than 150 peer-reviewed papers. She has served as co-convening lead author on chapters in five IPCC reports related to impacts and mitigation of climate change on the land use and forest sector.
Dusty Hall is currently the Manager of Program Development of The Miami Conservancy District. Dusty has a wide range of experience in water resources management ranging from source water to storm water. He is currently leading an effort to establish a market-based approach to water quality improvement in the Great Miami River Watershed.
Dennis King is a Professor at the University of Maryland and President of King and Associates, a consulting firm specializing in integrated environmental, economic, and risk analysis. He has developed several widely used analytical tools for assessing and comparing ecosystem services and values, and for debiting and crediting environmental mitigation trades. Most recently he has been developing applications of science-based methods for ranking investments and "scoring" trades involving water quality and water quality, carbon sequestration, wetlands, and wildlife habitats.
Jim Klang is the Lead Engineer in the Impaired Waters Program at the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency. Jim currently is lead engineer for nutrient pollutant trading, and Total Maximum Daily Load studies in the State of Minnesota where two of the earliest water quality trades took place.
Brian Murray will soon join the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University, as Director for Economic Analysis. Currrently, he is the Director of the Center for Regulatory Economics and Policy Research at RTI International a nonprofit corporation with a distinguished history in scientific research and technology development. Brian is a recognized expert in the integration of economic and biophysical models to assess greenhouse gas mitigation strategies in agriculture, land-use change, and forestry. He is co-author of several national and international assessments of forest resources, especially related to climate change.
Dennis O'Grady is the General Manager of South Nation Conservation, a 4,000 sq. km. watershed covering 15 municipalities in Ontario. South Nation delivers a wide variety of programs in surface and groundwater protection, forestry, fisheries, water quality, flood and erosion control, environmental planning and permitting. The South Nation River Watershed's trading program for phosphorus started 8 years ago; it currently has over 200 verifiable trades completed. South Nation recently completed a contract for the Province of Ontario detailing how to implement a phosphorus trading program in the Province.
Claire Schary is the water quality trading coordinator for EPA Region 10 in Seattle, WA. She led a team to develop the region's first demonstration projects for water quality trading on the Boise River and Mid-Snake River in Idaho and advised Oregon DEQ in developing their first temperature trading project on the Tualatin River. She also lead a team that developed the EPA's Water Quality Trading Assessment Handbook, which guides regulators and stakeholders in determining if water quality trading is the right tool for their watershed.
Eric Strecker of GeoSyntec Consultants is a recognized expert in the area of stormwater management, especially in the design, monitoring, and evaluation of best management practices (BMPs) and in development of watershed management plans. His work has included conducting applied National and local research studies for US EPA, Federal Highway Administration, Water Environment Research Foundation (WERF), and the National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) as well state and local governments throughout the western United States. Mr. Strecker was awarded the American Society of Civil Engineering´s "2003 State-of-the- Art in Civil Engineering" Award for his contributions as a Principal Investigator to the International BMP Database project, funded by EPA.