Tools & Mechanisms

USAID Environment

http://www.usaid.gov/our_work/environment/biodiver...

USAID has recognized the potential for environmentally sound enterprises to sustain people’s livelihoods while conserving important biodiversity. The Agency is helping communities gain the technical and management skills needed to undertake alternative enterprises, as well as access to credit and markets for their products. For example, USAID empowered the Koija community in Kenya to manage an ecotourism operation, facilitating the development of spin-off enterprises, with women's organizations and a youth organization.

Willamette Partnership: Protocols, Tools and Templates

http://willamettepartnership.org/tools-templates

The Willamette Partnership is a diverse coalition of conservation, city, business, farm, and science leaders in the Willamette River basin who are working to shift the way people think about, value, manage, and regulate the environment.  The standard credit issuance process, rules, and guidelines for generating credits and debits are described in protocol documents. Through the Counting on the Environment stakeholder process, the Willamette Partnership is continuing to develop protocols for more holistic ecosystem accounting.  Currently, protocols are under development for additional ecosystem currencies, voluntary tracking and accounting, and batch verification for small projects. Policy frameworks, permits, contracts, and forms used for creating, buying and selling conservation outcomes as offset credits in the Willamette can be used as templates for others designing ecosystem markets.  A lot of new information was developed during the course of developing an ecosystem credit accounting system.  To make participation in markets  easier, standard templates for various contractual agreements, certificates, protocols, and standards have been developed.