With the end of 2005 fast approaching, those involved with environmental markets and payment schemes around the globe are taking stock of a watershed year. The notion that market actors might assign value to ecosystem services and then invest in them as a means of furthering conservation and economic development was just an idea, albeit a powerful one, until very recently.

Then came 2005: the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme launched to trade an estimated $4.5 billion dollars of emissions credits; the Kyoto Protocol went into effect; the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment documented ecosystem services worth trillions of dollars; the world’s largest financial institutions began investing in ecosystem services research and markets; and experts from the fields of sustainable development, public health, conservation biology and resource economics convened numerous times to put payments for ecosystem services at the core of the global agenda.

Oh, and the Ecosystem Marketplace was born to cover the action.

It was, indeed, a big year for environmental markets. But for those truly committed to revolutionizing the global economy, the fun and work are just beginning. Sorting out the good from the bad from the just plain ugly and then using the information to improve the next-generation of payment schemes and markets is the real reason to take stock of what has happened to date. Toward that end, signatories of the Kyoto Protocol are meeting this week in Canada to discuss the future of the Protocol (and by proxy, carbon markets) beyond 2012.

Is the Kyoto Protocol the best means of achieving global reductions of greenhouse gases? Should we scrap it? Expand it? Alter it to include payments for avoided rainforest deforestation? (See: U.N. conference seeks middle ground). As global delegates hash it out in Montreal, the Ecosystem Marketplace has been following their discussions and initiating some of its own. Look for our upcoming coverage of the Montreal meeting.

This month, we tell the story of Beatrice Ahimbisibwe, a Ugandan schoolteacher turned carbon consultant, who has been planting trees on her land since 2003. Even as debates rage about whether or not the regulatory carbon markets should throw open the door to carbon emissions reductions from forestry projects, Ahimbisibwe and others like her have quietly been proving that planting trees for carbon sequestration can change lives (and the landscape) in the mountains of East Africa.

Tweaking the regulatory infrastructure to increase the efficiency and equitability of payments for ecosystem services has been a theme of late for those involved in water and biodiversity markets as well. In "Bringing Back the Buffer," the Marketplace takes a close look at how regulatory changes might help wetland mitigation banks in the US better restore the flood control services of ecosystems along the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast. And "Halting the Plunder Down Under" leads us to Australia, where the government of New South Wales is borrowing from, and potentially improving upon, American conservation banking schemes to save Australia’s unique biodiversity from destruction.

We hope you will enjoy these and other stories from the Ecosystem Marketplace as you prepare to close out 2005: a watershed year for environmental markets.

Amanda Hawn, Associate Editor
Ricardo Bayon, Managing Editor
Adam Davis, Editor-in-Chief
Michael Jenkins, Publisher