Footnote:
In: 2 (2013) Transnational Environmental Law 259-283
Nach Informationen von SSRN wurde die ursprüngliche Fassung des Dokuments 2013 erstellt
Description:
Markets in ecosystem services have the potential to provide financial incentives to protect the environment either in lieu of or in addition to more traditional regulatory programmes. If these markets function properly, they can provide enhanced levels of environmental quality or more efficient mechanisms for protecting natural resources that provide vital services to humans. The theoretical benefits of ecosystem services markets may be undercut, however, if care is not taken in creating the legal infrastructure that supports trading to ensure that trades actually provide the promised environmental benefits. This article identifies five essential pillars of an ecosystem services market regime that are necessary to provide operational accountability safeguards. These include financial safeguards, verifiable performance standards, transparency and public participation standards, regulatory oversight mechanisms, and rule of law safeguards.. The article assesses whether US and EU laws are well designed to provide such accountability. It concludes that despite recognition of the risk of market manipulation and outright fraud, regulators in the US and the EU to date have responded to these risks largely in ad hoc and incomplete fashion, rather than embedding the mechanisms for operation accountability discussed in this article into the regulatory framework that governs ecosystem services trading markets