Ecosystems provide trillions of dollars in clean water, flood protection, soil health, clean air, disease control and many other services (as well as habitat for endangered species). Essential to maintaining habitable conditions, many of these services are not fully priced into the supply or demand chain.

This has meant that they haven't been prioritized and are now in decline, which has resulted in a wide range of efforts in many countries to start to value and pay for these ecosystem services using 'ecosystem markets'.

These markets centre around the trading of environmental assets derived from the services (and/or the habitats provided for endangered species) provided by ecosystems and provide a powerful way to manage and price those limited assets.

As understanding of them and their potential grows, regulators, companies, investors and landowners are grappling with issues like stacking of credits, how to properly track new markets and how to ensure transparency and credibility in early stages of market development. These are all issues that a properly designed registry can assist with.

Quality tools can help turn an underperforming local market into a vibrant, credible transparent one ready for broader regional implementation.