Topic: wetlands

This issue brief describes analyses by the World Resources Institute (WRI) in support of emerging payments for watershed services (PWS) programs in two major watersheds in Maine and North Carolina and insights gleaned from work in progress. The three pilot initiatives discussed represent different approaches to establishing PWS programs that protect forests and other green infrastructure elements.

Experts and innovators meet to chart the future of ecosystem conservation

These tables serve as a reference document containing the key design elements of nutrient trading programs in four Chesapeake Bay states: Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia.

When it comes to providing clean water, investments in forest conservation can save money.

The issue brief provides an overview of how businesses and water utilities in the United States and Latin America are pursuing upstream forest conservation as a cost-effective means of ensuring clean water supplies. It also suggests how many of these approaches could be applicable in the southern United States.

In the Southern United States, the watersheds with the greatest ability to produce clean water and with the most consumers tend to be the forested watersheds of the east (top).

Many payments for watershed services share a common trait: they are investments in “green infrastructure” instead of “gray infrastructure.” In other words, they are investments in forests i

Research Identifies 530 Coastal “Dead Zones” and 228 Marine Eutrophic Sites

The federal commitment to develop and support environmental markets could have national significance.

This working paper describes the rationale for nutrient trading in the Chesapeake Bay region and estimates the economic benefits, including potential benefits to the agriculture, wastewater, and stormwater sectors.

Lawmakers should consider a suite of policies to reduce harmful algal blooms and dead zones caused by eutrophication–the over-enrichment of nitrogen and phosphorous in freshwater and coastal ecosystems.

In the 1980s, Thailand’s government, initially supported by the World Bank, focused on a single ecosystem service—aquaculture—to supply a growing frozen shrimp export industry.

A retrospectiv

Greater meat consumption and demand for fossil fuels worldwide are expected to cause increasingly more harmful algal blooms and dead zones in coastal and freshwater areas.

Presidential intervention has raised the stakes in a decades-long effort to clean up Chesapeake Bay.

Uganda’s leaders now have access to maps that will allow them—for the first time ever—to reduce poverty through better management of the country’s wetlands.

Insights from the Field: Forests for Water

MEDIA ADVISORY: 4th Annual Ecosystem Markets Conference - Making Ecosystems Work

Comparison Tables of State Nutrient Trading Programs in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed

Protecting Forests to Protect Water in the U.S. South

Forests for Water: Exploring Payments for Watershed Services in the U.S. South

Watersheds of the Southern United States

Forests and Water: Green Infrastructure Can Be Less Expensive Than Gray Infrastructure

New Web-Based Map Tracks Marine "Dead Zones" Worldwide

Obama Administration Releases New Strategy to Clean Up Chesapeake Bay

How Nutrient Trading Could Help Restore the Chesapeake Bay

NEWS RELEASE: Suite of Policies Could Clean Up Polluted Waters

Comparing the Economic and Social Value of Mangroves and Shrimp Farms

World’s Waters Choking from Meat Consumption and Other Human Activities

New Hope for the Chesapeake Bay, Maybe

Uganda Wetland Maps Will Help Reduce Poverty, Boost Economy

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Topic: wetlands

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WRI Engagement Across the World