Watershed Connect

A Peruvian sociologist dedicated to poverty alleviation has helped implement a version of payments for watershed services projects in impoverished nations like Guatemala, Peru and Indonesia with the help of WWF. The initiatives have led to a host of benefits for the local populations and ecosystems and now have the Chinese government as well as other nations interested in the model.

Good land stewardship and energy efficiency both support our economy, but governments don’t pay nearly as much attention to the economic benefits of investment in environmental restoration as they do to investments in energy efficiency. Damon Hess of Sitka Technology argues that they should.

Ecosystem Marketplace is at the One Water Leadership Summit in Los Angeles this week where everyone is thinking about the water-energy nexus. Meanwhile, Australia's newly elected government reduces funds for Murray-Darling buybacks and Coca-Coca enters into a partnership with the USDA to protect US National Forests.

This Week is World Water Week and a coalition spanning the US-Mexico border is a perfect example of this year's theme-water cooperation. The group is thinking outside the box to restore the Colorado River delta - using water rights markets, recaptured wastewater, and a groundbreaking new federal deal-that's breathing new life into an ecosystem widely assumed to be gone forever.

Two organizations with a shared interest in improving the Chesapeake Bay watershed are divided over a draft nutrient trading bill in Pennsylvania, with supporters foreseeing a slash in the cost of Bay cleanup and opponents seeing technology that isn't cost-competitive or compliant with state and federal regulations.