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American Farmland Trust
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Assessing the Economic Factors Driving Agricultural and Point Source Participation in Market-Based Ecosystem Trading Programs
American Farmland Trust (AFT) is using funding from the Walker Foundation to assess the economic factors driving point source and farmers' participation in market-based ecosystem trading programs. AFT's project is focused on the Sauk River Watershed in Minnesota, where we are carrying out the first test of a water quality trading and multiple "eco-services" market involving point source polluters and agriculture in the Midwest. The Walker Foundation grant is supporting a two-part project for AFT to 1) analyze the private market demand for ecosystem service credits in the watershed (i.e. the economic factors influencing industry's motivation to purchase environment credits from farmers); and 2) analyze the supply side for ecosystem service credits (i.e. the ability and inclination of farmers to produce sell credits). This demonstration project can be applied to emerging environmental credit trading markets around the country.
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Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
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Explores and develops market-based solutions.
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American Forest Foundation
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Conservation Incentives (CI): Increasing the use of market-based approaches to conserve and enhance ecosystem services on private lands.
CI's mission is to facilitate the evolution of the market-based conservation field through a two-pronged strategy: an on-the-ground approach in which we pilot replicable market-based solutions in critical forested landscapes, and a panoramic approach in which we convene diverse stakeholders through a variety of forums to facilitate the dialogue necessary for industry development. By employing these two complementary methodologies, CI aims to develop ecosystem markets, assist landowners in achieving ecological and economic goals, address forest adaptation to climate change, and combat biodiversity loss and fragmentation.
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Explores and develops market-based solutions.
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Cape Cod Commercial Hook Fishermen's Association
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Integrated Catch-Based Management of Northeast Fisheries to Reduce Wasteful At-Sea Discarding
This 'Fisheries Integration Initiative' seeks to promote effective fisheries management solutions for New England. Recent changes to the management of New England’s groundfish fishery have been well-documented. However, among the most important and widely overlooked consequences of the new groundfish management plan is its unintended impacts on other demersal (bottom-living) fish stocks, including monkfish, skates and dogfish. Without quick action, these issues threaten to undermine the primary goal of this initiative, which is to end overfishing and protect our region’s fisheries resources. The most effective solution is to integrate the management of all demersal stocks with the groundfish plan (an approach similar to British Columbia’s multispecies groundfish fishery). The longer the management of these over-lapping fisheries remains segregated, the more risk there is to currently healthy stocks and the harder it will ultimately be to transition to ecosystem-based management.
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Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
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Explores and develops market-based solutions.
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Ensuring Catch Share Implementation in New England's Groundfish Fishery
New England’s groundfish fishery, which includes cod, haddock, pollock, & flounders, has been struggling to rebuild depleted fish populations for decades. Current management measures have proved ineffective. CCCHFA, in partnership with other Walker Foundation grantees, is leading a regional shift to market-based catch share management. The unexpected level of regional demand for catch share management has immobilized the regulators as they face resource limitations. The emerging political issues related to the timely implementation of catch shares require CCCHFA to be flexible in working with the regulators to develop solutions that will continue making progress. Discretionary support from the Walker Foundation has allowed CCCHFA to convene and mobilize stakeholders, program partners, Council members and staff, and government employees as needed to re-mobilize the adaptation of catch shares.
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Explores and develops market-based solutions.
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Cook Inletkeeper
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Internalizing the Hidden Costs of Coal: A Case Study of the Proposed Chuitna Coal Project, Cook Inlet, Alaska
Alaska possesses roughly half the nation's coal reserves, and with rising energy demand, Asian countries are increasingly looking to Alaska coal reserves for "cheap" and abundant fuel sources. The Chuitna coal mine in Southcentral Alaska, if approved, will secure the markets and install the infrastructure that will transform Alaska into a major coal export province. Yet Cook Inlet fisheries generate over $1 billion a year in economic activity, and the Chuitna coal mine would mine through 11 miles of salmon streams and discharge nearly 2 billion gallons a year of mine waste into fish habitat.
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Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
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Critical Review Foundation
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Causes of the Financial Crisis
Critical Review has published a special double issue in which scholars examined the causes of the financial crisis from a wide variety of perspectives. The issue treated different causes, ranging from monetary and housing policy to bank-capital regulations, and produced a comprehensive theory of the crisis as being due to regulatory failure of a new sort: the interaction of different regulations, originating as far back as 1936 and covering different industries. This failure was thus totally unpredictable, but has ominous implications for the future, given the immense proliferation of regulations in every industry.
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Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
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Investigates the effect of the global financial system and/or the monetary system in fostering a sustainable economy.
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Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
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Explores and develops market-based solutions.
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Conference on Political Ignorance and Dogmatism
Through its scholarly journal, Critical Review, the Critical Review Foundation has pioneered a new approach to understanding modern politics, in which ignorance is treated as the default position of voters, political activists, media personnel, and policy makers; and unintentional bias in politics and policy is hypothesized to be a common result. A cohort of seven young scholars who have been influenced by this approach engaged in six hours of public dialogue with ten eminent scholars from political science and other fields at a Conference on Political Ignorance and Dogmatism, held in Boston on August 31, 2008, with the assistance of the Walker Foundation. The comments of Scott Althaus, author of Collective Preferences in Democratic Politics (Cambridge University Press), were representative: “What a wonderful experience! It was among the very best scholarly interchanges that I’ve ever attended….All in all, I consider this to have been a smashing success.”
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Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
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Defenders of Wildlife
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“Stakeholder Meeting on Red Wolf Ecotourism in North Carolina”
Defenders of Wildlife (Defenders) hosted a stakeholder meeting to develop a red wolf-based ecotourism plan for communities located in rural northeastern North Carolina. The one-day meeting focused on formulating strategies to initiate the next steps the local community must take to make ecotourism a viable means of economic development.
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Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
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Explores and develops market-based solutions.
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The Application of Ecosystem Service Markets to the Conservation of Red Wolf Habitat in North Carolina: A Local Effort with National Implications
The project centers on exploring and developing private market solutions to public wildlife conservation goods. Key project objectives are to
(1) identify specific ecosystem services associated with the conservation of red wolves and their habitat; (2) quantify the economic market and non-market benefits that may flow from the continued provision of these services; (3) identify private and/or public incentive or income transfer mechanisms that would allow landowners to capture the benefits of services provided from their land; (4) begin to link protection of red wolf habitat to national or state resource conservation programs that promote market approaches to conservation; and (5) provide a model for implementing ecosystem service payments for wildlife habitat that can be replicated in other areas of the country.
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Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
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Investigates the effect of the global financial system and/or the monetary system in fostering a sustainable economy.
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Explores and develops market-based solutions.
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Facilitating the Development of a Private Voluntary Market for Red Wolf Habitat Credits: Identifying Buyers and Designing a Trading Platform
This project will build upon Defenders’ previous ecosystem services and marketing work in areas supporting red wolf habitat by identifying potential buyers of red wolf habitat credits within a voluntary market framework. The project will also help identify and facilitate the development of a market structure for such transactions within which local landowners as the suppliers of credits can participate and generate income from their habitat and species conservation efforts. This project will leverage, complement and expand the private market-oriented habitat conservation incentive mechanisms that Defenders developed or is developing: ecotourism, and payments for ecosystem services such as carbon sequestration and water quality. The project effort to identify potential buyers of red wolf habitat credits and facilitate market development will benefit from Defenders initiatives in other grant-funded projects at both the regional and national levels.
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Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
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Investigates the effect of the global financial system and/or the monetary system in fostering a sustainable economy.
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Explores and develops market-based solutions.
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The Application of Ecosystem Service Markets to the Conservation of Red Wolf Habitat in North Carolina: A Local Effort with National Implications
This two part project is in Phase II consisting of the following three tasks: 1) Quantifying the economic value of selected ecosystem service benefits associated with conserving red wolf habitat, including carbon storage on agricultural and undeveloped lands; 2) quantifying the economic value of open space property value premiums and recreation; 3) conducting a cash flow analysis associated with the provision of these services from private agricultural lands, and identifying and promoting policy proposals for the implementation of market-based incentives that link protection of red wolf habitat to national or state resource conservation programs.
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Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
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Investigates the effect of the global financial system and/or the monetary system in fostering a sustainable economy.
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Explores and develops market-based solutions.
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Economics Department, Brown University
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Experimental Study of Preferences Over the Distribution of Income
We conducted twenty decision-making experiments in which 345 undergraduate students and 55 adult subjects participated. Subjects were assigned unequal pre-tax incomes mirroring the distribution of income in the United States, then made decisions about the extent, if any, to which incomes should be redistributed by taxation, under varying tax costs, degrees of efficiency and incentive (administrative) costs, and determinants of initial income. Results suggest willingness to pay to lessen inequality among other individuals, but largely self-interested voting when own income is at stake.
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Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
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Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
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Environmental Defense
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Creating Economic Incentives for Tropical Forest Preservation: Compensated Reduction
Tropical forest destruction contributes to several global environmental problems, including climate change, releasing up to 20% of total global greenhouse gas emissions. Compensated Reduction (CR) is an innovative mechanism enabling nations that reduce deforestation to be compensated through the emerging global carbon market. This project will provide the research and analysis needed to create a successful CR program and assess market design options.
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Explores and develops market-based solutions.
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Explores and develops market-based solutions.
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Safeguarding New England's Groundfish Fishery and Marine Ecosystem through Market-based Management Programs
Recently published research (Science, 9/18/2008) that looked at data from 11,000 fisheries worldwide from 1950 to 2003 found that fisheries that were managed through “catch share” cap-and-trade systems halted and even reversed steep population declines, while traditionally managed fisheries did not. Environmental Defense Fund, along with partner groups, seeks to replace failed “days-at-sea” regulations for New England’s declining marine fisheries with this proven market-based solution to improve their ecological and economic health and resilience.
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Explores and develops market-based solutions.
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Safeguarding Gulf of Mexico Reef Fish through Market-based Management
Many stocks in the Gulf of Mexico's reef fish fishery (including red snapper, grouper, amberjack, grey triggerfish, yellowtail and vermilion snapper) are in trouble, with some classified as overfished. EDF and Gulf fishermen helped design and implement a new market-based management program of catch shares, called individual fishing quotas (IFQs), which was implemented for commercial red snapper in January 2007. The IFQ program has shown significant and immediate ecological and economic benefits. As a result of this success and the efforts of EDF and allies, a new IFQ program will be implemented in January 2010 for several valuable commercial grouper and tilefish species. However, other species in the complex are in need of similar reforms, and until all reef fish are managed under IFQs, needless bycatch and economic waste will impede the full conservation and business benefits that market-based management offer. EDF is working to bring IFQs to the full Gulf reef fish complex.
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Explores and develops market-based solutions.
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Safeguarding New England's Groundfish Fishery and Marine Ecosystem through Market-based Management Programs
Under the Obama Administration, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has embraced "catch share" management as the most profitable, effective way to end overfishing and restore the nation's marine fisheries. Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), in partnership with industry, non-profit partners and NOAA, is working to help New England fishermen successfully transition to catch shares in New England's troubled marine fisheries.
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Explores and develops market-based solutions.
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Climate Treasure: Bringing Tropical Forest Credits into the Global Carbon Market
Tropical deforestation releases up to 20% of total global greenhouse gas emissions—roughly equivalent to the fossil fuel emissions of the United States. If rainforest nations had economic incentives to protect their forests—if their forests were worth more alive than dead—we could keep more than 300 billion tons of carbon out of the atmosphere, sustain critical global ecosystems, alleviate poverty in developing nations, and provide early and important value to the world’s carbon markets. We propose to continue our work on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD). The most significant breakthrough with regard to our REDD policy objectives was Brazil’s announcement of a deforestation reduction target of 70% within ten years, below the average annual deforestation of the decade from 1996 – 2005, or 19,500 km² per year.
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Explores and develops market-based solutions.
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Regulating the Carbon Market: Designing sound rules to transition to a low carbon economy
Passage of climate legislation will mark the beginning, not the end, of the effort to design a sound, market-based system for incentivizing transitioning U.S. to a low-carbon, high efficiency (LCHE) economy. This project will produce the analytic and consultative work needed to design the regulatory framework necessary to oversee and support an effective, transparent national carbon market.
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Explores and develops market-based solutions.
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Safeguarding New England's Groundfish Fishery and Marine Ecosystem through Market-based Management Programs
Recently published research (Science, 9/18/2008) that looked at data from 11,000 fisheries worldwide from 1950 to 2003 found that fisheries that were managed through “catch share” cap-and-trade systems halted and even reversed steep population declines, while traditionally managed fisheries did not. Environmental Defense Fund, along with partner groups, seeks to replace failed “days-at-sea” regulations for New England’s declining marine fisheries with this proven market-based solution to improve their ecological and economic health and resilience. After more than 2 years of development, a plan, known as Amendment 16, is almost ready that will give fishermen the option to continue under the current regulatory system or join a market-based sector.
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Explores and develops market-based solutions.
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Safeguarding Gulf of Mexico Reef Fish through Market-based Management
Many stocks in the Gulf of Mexico's reef fish fishery (including red snapper, grouper, amberjack and vermilion snapper) are in trouble, with some classified as overfished. In January 2007, Walker Foundation support helped implement a new market-based management program of catch shares, called individual fishing quotas (IFQs), for Gulf red snapper, bringing new promise for fishery and fishing industry recovery. An IFQ for grouper/tilefish has now been approved and is set for implementation in January 2010. The Gulf Council has also initiated a process to include all remaining reef fish in the IFQ.
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Explores and develops market-based solutions.
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Environmental Law & Policy Center of the Midwest
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Environmental Law and Policy Center and Carbon Tax Center - Market-Based Approaches to Reduce Carbon Emissions
The Environmental Law and Policy Center (“ELPC”), in conjunction with the Carbon Tax Center (“CTC”), is analyzing the economic impacts and efficacy of the major market-based (carbon-pricing) mechanisms for stabilizing and reducing emissions of greenhouse gases: cap-and-trade systems and revenue-neutral taxes. Our analysis utilizes the nine-state region in ELPC’s charter: Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota and Wisconsin. This is both large enough to be meaningful in terms of overall U.S. policy and impacts, and small enough to capture impacts and serve as a test case.
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Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
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Investigates the effect of the global financial system and/or the monetary system in fostering a sustainable economy.
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Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
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Explores and develops market-based solutions.
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Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment (FREE)
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Explores and develops market-based solutions.
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Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
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Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
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Explores and develops market-based solutions.
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Environmental Economics for Religious Leaders
Economics teaches us how the market process, including voluntary organizations, can help us achieve our environmental goals. It also tells us that choices among competing values are indeed necessary in the environmental arena as they are in every other sector of society. The exploration of trade-off is a fundamental part of economic analysis.
This project explores and develops market-based solutions to environmental problems with an important audience: religious leaders. With them we will explore how economic analysis may be used to examine environmental policy alternatives, in a manner that minimizes unintended, negative consequences, while maximizing positive impact on the environment.
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Explores and develops market-based solutions.
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Explores and develops market-based solutions.
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Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
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Explores and develops market-based solutions.
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Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
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Explores and develops market-based solutions.
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Conference Series on Economics, Science, and Policy Analysis for Federal Judges, State Supreme Court Justices, and Law Professors.
In 2010 FREE offered two conferences in our series, "Economics, Science, and Policy Analysis", to federal judges, state supreme-court justices, and law professors. The first was, “Personal Health Care Choices & Public Policy” and the second was “Terrorism, Civil Liberty, & National Security.” FREE brought economic and ethical perspectives on each of these troublesome topics to an important audience.
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Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
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Explores and develops market-based solutions.
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GreenHOME
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Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
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Explores and develops market-based solutions.
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Gulf of Maine Research Institute
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FISHTANK: Designing A New Model for Groundfish Management
FishTank is an effort to bring together the New England’s ground fishing community to develop a common understanding of alternative management strategies (including the use of market incentives) and collectively articulate one or more preferred options to the New England Fisheries Management Council for consideration as the Council develops a new management plan for the region. This is a stakeholder-driven initiative that grows out of a monthly discussion forum hosted by the Gulf of Maine Research Institute over the past year.
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Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
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Explores and develops market-based solutions.
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Designing a Monitoring and Reporting System to Support Market-Based Approaches to Fishery Management in New England
Support from the Alex C. Walker Foundation in 2008 enabled the Gulf of Maine Research Institute to take a lead role in supporting the transition of the New England groundfish fishery to harvesting cooperatives called sectors (a type of catch share management). GMRI provided sector members and policymakers with a clear analysis of the options and costs of phasing in a new system to enable timely and accurate monitoring of each group’s catch. In June 2009, the New England Fishery Management Council authorized the creation of 16 new sectors, marking a significant shift toward a market-based approach to managing fisheries. The new rules will take effect in May 2010.
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Explores and develops market-based solutions.
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Gund Institute for Ecological Economics
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Green Tax and Common Assets Project
The Vermont Green Tax and Common Assets Project researches, educates and disseminates information on recovery of unearned income from common assets such as the monetary system, speculation, land, minerals, spectrum and other resources. In addition we investigate green taxes on throughput including depletion, land use, and pollution, which are ignored by market economics.
These sources of income are a better alternative to taxing productive activities such as income, wages, excise, sales and building construction that create disincentives to productivity. By taking the profit out of speculation in finance, land, and natural resources, investment is directed towards real production and real goods. Additionally, we investigate the feasibility of redirecting some income from common assets to citizens in the form of a dividend, similar to the Alaska Permanent Fund annual dividend which contributes to Alaska’s standing as the state with the lowest level of wealth inequality in the U.S.
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Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
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Investigates the effect of the global financial system and/or the monetary system in fostering a sustainable economy.
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Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
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Explores and develops market-based solutions.
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Vermont Green Tax and Common Assets Project
The Vermont Green Tax and Common Assets Project researches, educates and disseminates information on recovery of unearned income from common assets such as the monetary system, speculation, land, minerals, spectrum and other resources. In addition we investigate green taxes on throughput including depletion, land use, and pollution, which are ignored by market economics.
These sources of income are a better alternative to taxing productive activities such as income, wages, excise, sales and building construction that create disincentives to productivity. By taking the profit out of speculation in finance, land, and natural resources, investment is directed towards real production and real goods. Additionally, we investigate the feasibility of redirecting some income from common assets to citizens in the form of a dividend, similar to the Alaska Permanent Fund annual dividend which contributes to Alaska’s standing as the state with the lowest level of wealth inequality in the U.S.
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Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
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Investigates the effect of the global financial system and/or the monetary system in fostering a sustainable economy.
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Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
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Explores and develops market-based solutions.
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Vermont Green Tax and Common Assets Project
Green taxes involve increasing resource, land, and pollution taxes, and simultaneously decreasing taxes on productive items such as wages, income, and sales. They can also be used to pay dividends to the public. Green taxes create a market incentive for consumers and producers to choose a more environmentally clean product or service, thus fostering environmental accountability. The ultimate goal of this project is to provide detailed research materials and information to policymakers in Vermont in order to implement a green tax program for Vermont. Part of this project also includes development of a Vermont Common Assets Permanent Fund modeled after the Alaska Permanent Fund.
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Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
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Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
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Explores and develops market-based solutions.
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Vermont Green Tax and Common Assets Project
Our overall goal and expected result continues to be the implementation of globally successful market incentive mechanisms such as green taxes and common asset payments to achieve environmental sustainability, economic efficiency, and equity in Vermont. Our primary fourth year goal is to publish and present our finding in conferences, legislative testimony and other forums. We plan to continue research on quantifying common asset and green tax revenue available in Vermont, utilizing a cadre of 10-15 UVM students working on the project.
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Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
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Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
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Explores and develops market-based solutions.
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Human Arts Association
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PANDORA'S PROMISE
PANDORA'S PROMISE will be a feature-length documentary about the history and development of nuclear power and the current debate surrounding its revival as a means of averting a climate catastrophe. The film will be structured around key interviews with leading environmentalists, energy experts and former anti-nuclear activists who have undergone (or are undergoing) a conversion to nuclear power as a necessary and vital component to our future alternative energy mix. The film aims to use the heated debate surrounding nuclear power as a vehicle for taking a realistic and comprehensive look at the worlds energy dilemma, for examining the true costs of our current addiction to fossil fuels, and relative merits of the alternatives from an economic, technological and environmental perspective.
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Explores and develops market-based solutions.
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Institute for Justice
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Hands Off My Home!
The Hands Off My Home campaign effects significant and substantial reforms of state and local eminent domain laws. While we are not a lobbying firm, we do provide a unique and principled perspective to legislators at every level of government on how to better protect the property rights of Americans. Launched in June 2005—just days after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the federal Constitution allows government to use its power of eminent domain to generate more tax revenue—we employ a strategic approach, using legislative counseling, grassroots organization, social science research, and media relations to increase protections for property owners nationwide.
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Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
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Explores and develops market-based solutions.
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Taking Private Property for Law Enforcement Profit
Civil asset forfeiture threatens the property rights of all Americans. These laws allow the police to seize your home, car, cash, or other property upon the mere suspicion that it has been used or involved in criminal activity. Civil forfeiture is a legal fiction that permits law enforcement to charge property with a crime. Unlike criminal forfeiture, where property is taken away only after its owner has been found guilty in a court of law, with civil forfeiture, owners need not be convicted of any crime to lose their property. The Institute for Justice is challenging this abuse in court and the court of public opinion to take the profit out of civil forfeiture and protect innocent owners caught up in an upside-down legal process that violates fundamental constitutional protections.
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Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
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Hands Off My Home!
Launched in 2005 in response to the U.S. Supreme Court's heartbreaking 5-4 decision in Kelo v. City of New London, the Hands Off My Home Campaign trains home and small business owners to defend their property from eminent domain abuse. As part of this campaign we assess and monitor the eminent domain situation in each state, draft model legislation, testify before legislative committees, review pending bills, generate media around legislation, and mobilize grassroots support.
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Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
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Hands Off My Home!
The Hands Off My Home campaign continued in 2007 to advocate state reform of eminent domain laws. Since the Kelo ruling, 42 states passed new laws aimed at curbing the abuse of eminent domain for private use—11 in 2007 alone.
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Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
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Explores and develops market-based solutions.
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Hands Off My Home!
Since the Kelo decision in 2005, the Hands Off My Home campaign, through our training, public education, and advocacy, has saved over 16,000 homes and businesses from eminent domain abuse. A key component of the campaign is to provide a unique and principled perspective to legislators at every level of government on how to better protect the property rights of Americans. To date, we have successfully advocated for reform in 43 states.
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Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
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Explores and develops market-based solutions.
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Mt. Desert Island Biological Laboratory
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Securing Protection for Eelgrass Beds: Overcoming Economic Imbalances through Submerged Land Leases in Frenchman’s Bay and the Gulf of Maine
Eelgrass beds in the subtidal zone along the Atlantic coastline provide vital but undervalued ecosystem services, yet their coverage has declined precipitously over the past twenty years. In areas with good water quality, this decline may be due primarily to dragging by commercial mussel harvesters. Working collaboratively with local community groups and a commercial mussel grower, the Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory (MDIBL) in Bar Harbor, Maine, has been restoring an eelgrass bed in a pilot project over the past three years while conducting scientific research on restoration techniques and the ecological value of eelgrass. MDIBL is now partnering with The Nature Conservancy to create a model for establishing conservation agreements based on a process that explores and develops market-based solutions in collaboration with local fishing communities and regulatory agencies.
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Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
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Explores and develops market-based solutions.
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National Wildlife Federation
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Grazing Retirement Auction on the C.M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge
The National Wildlife Federation resolves conflict between wildlife and livestock through the market approach of compensating ranchers for retiring problematic grazing leases on federal land. Restoring populations of large predators, such as wolves and grizzlies, has been linked to recovering healthy, functioning ecosystems in the Northern Rockies. Thanks to the Walker Foundation and other funders, NWF has been able to retire 30 grazing allotments in the Yellowstone Ecosystem, totaling more than half a million acres. More recently, NWF has experimented with an auction concept to retire grazing permits on the C.M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge. This approach establishes an important new national model for resolving chronic conflicts between wildlife and livestock.
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Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
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Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
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Explores and develops market-based solutions.
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2008 Wildlife Conflict Resolution Project/Dunoir Grazing Allotment
NWF resolves conflict between wildlife and livestock through the market approach of compensating ranchers for retiring problematic grazing leases on federal land. Restoring populations of large predators, such as wolves and grizzlies, has been linked to recovering healthy, functioning ecosystems in the Northern Rockies. Thanks to the Walker Foundation and other funders, NWF has been able to retire 30 grazing allotments in the Yellowstone Ecosystem, totaling more than half a million acres. This approach establishes an important new national model for resolving conflicts between wildlife and livestock.
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Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
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Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
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Explores and develops market-based solutions.
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Wildlife Conflict Resolution Project (Bacon Creek/Fish Creek grazing allotments)
In coordination with federal land managers, NWF negotiates with livestock producers to retire livestock grazing allotments on public lands that experience chronic conflict with wildlife, especially wolves and grizzly bears. This market approach recognizes the economic value of livestock grazing permits and fairly compensates producers for retiring their leases. It also addresses the economic imbalance that exists because wildlife conservation interests are not allowed to compete with livestock producers for grazing leases on public lands. This approach establishes an important new national model for resolving conflicts between wildlife and livestock.
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Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
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Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
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Explores and develops market-based solutions.
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Grazing Retirement Project
Our goal is to promote the conservation of wolves, grizzly bears, bison, bighorn sheep and other wildlife in the Yellowstone Ecosystem by eliminating chronic conflicts with domestic livestock. We will accomplish this by providing livestock permittees with an incentive payment in exchange for their agreement to permanently retire grazing allotments.
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Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
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Explores and develops market-based solutions.
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National Wildlife Federation - Alaska Office
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Sustainable Tourism Certification Project - Prince William Sound
Tourism is both the best economic hope for Prince William Sound residents and the greatest threat to the Prince William Sound environment and the quality of life of Prince William Sound communities. Unfortunately, current environmental regulations do not force tourism operators to bear the costs of their use of the Sound environment, and the market does not reward businesses that operate sustainably. The resulting economic imbalance is eroding the environmental health of Prince William Sound and the quality of life of Prince William Sound communities. This project creates a sustainable tourism operator certification and accompanying marketing infrastructure to encourage sustainable tourism and to build a powerful local constituency with a strong economic stake in protecting the Prince William Sound environment. Ultimately, it should be a model for certification nation-wide.
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Explores and develops market-based solutions.
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Prince William Sound Project: Building an Economic Foundation for Lasting Public Stewardship
Tourism is both the best economic hope for Prince William Sound's residents and the greatest threat to its environment and quality of life. While tourism is likely to be the growth industry of the future, environmental policies do not force tourism operators to bear the costs of their use of Prince William Sound's environment and the market does not reward businesses that operate sustainably. Consequently, there is an economic imbalance that is eroding the environmental health of Prince William Sound and the quality of life of its communities. This project seeks to make sustainable tourism practices more profitable while demonstrating the connection between protecting the environment and a healthy economy.
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Explores and develops market-based solutions.
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Oregon Water Trust
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2005 - 2006 Water Rights Acquisition Program
The Water Rights Acquisition Program increases stream flows for fish conservation, water quality improvements, or recreational use by purchasing, leasing or in other ways acquiring water rights (permits to take water from a stream) from voluntary sellers, mainly farmers, ranchers and private landowners. Our cooperative, free-market approach to water conservation balances the environmental needs of salmon (and other threatened fish species) with the economic needs of farmers and irrigators, and in doing so helps rural communities maintain their resource-focused industries while building local support for river and stream stewardship.
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Explores and develops market-based solutions.
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PERC (Partnering with ED and Reason)
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Moving Forward with Rights-Based Fisheries
This project entails a unique partnership in which PERC, Environmental Defense-Austin TX office and the Reason Public Policy Institute are applying their individual strengths to bring about positive change in ocean fisheries management through rights-based fishing. Toward this goal, the partners held three seminars for U.S. federal policy makers and produced three educational booklets covering different aspects of individual fishing quotas (IFQs) conducted site visits and a workshop on innovative strategies for managing shrimp fisheries in North America; provided technical support for applying IFQs to the red snapper fishery; carried out a feasibility study of applying rights-based management to the Galapagos' sea cucumber fishery; and carried out initial plans to explore the integration of island community tenure systems with marine reserves.
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Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
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Explores and develops market-based solutions.
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New Initiatives for Rights-based Fishing.
The project evaluates and disseminates the potential benefits of applying rights-based fishing to economically and environmentally troubled marine fisheries in the Gulf of Mexico. It also provides planning support for their application. Project efforts are directed at correcting current economic imbalances by applying market-based approaches. This is a collaborative effort involving the Property and Environment Research Center (PERC), Reason Public Policy Institute, and Environmental Defense (ED).
Note: Total project approved is $60,000 with $25,000 paid in Feb, 2007 to project partner Environmental Defense.
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Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
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Explores and develops market-based solutions.
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Predator Conservation Alliance
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Wildlife Friendly Certification Project
Predator Conservation Alliance's Wildlife Friendly Certification Project is exploring and developing market-based solutions that conserve and protect endangered wildlife around the world. The grant from the Walker Foundation supported an international Wildlife Friendly Summit held in Jacksonville, Florida, that brought together business leaders, entrepreneurs and wildlife biologists to investigate markets for wildlife-friendly products, and discuss ways to overcome perverse economic incentives and build fees for ecosystem services into the cost of producing goods. A report from this summit will be generated by the end of March.
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Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
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Investigates the effect of the global financial system and/or the monetary system in fostering a sustainable economy.
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Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
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Explores and develops market-based solutions.
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Reason Foundation
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Reform of Air Traffic Control System
Conducted projects to build support for reform: 1) continued educational outreach to private pilots and environmental organizations; 2) a study to assess the feasibility of applying net-centric ATC technology to improving airport capacity, drawing on the expertise of industry professionals, technology experts and environmental groups.
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Explores and develops market-based solutions.
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Resources First Foundation
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Resources First Foundation - Project Title: Chestnut Database
The American Chestnut Foundation's mission is to "restore the American chestnut tree to the forests of Eastern North America by breeding a blight resistant timber type tree." The American chestnut once comprised a quarter of the eastern hardwood forest from Maine to Georgia, providing a valuable economic resource. An accidentally imported chestnut blight decimated the trees, with devastating results to Appalachian communities and economies. Building an online database will accelerate the tree breeding program. TACF and RFF
received a grant from the Walker Foundation to build an online tree breeding database for restoration of the American chestnut. The grant demonstrates the potential for the application of biotechnology to restoring damaged economies and ecosystems.
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Explores and develops market-based solutions.
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Salmon-Safe Inc.
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Salmon-Safe Applegate 2007
Salmon-Safe Applegate is the expansion of an innovative free market conservation initiative engaging southern Oregon's agricultural sector in protecting water quality and imperiled wild salmon. With the support of the Walker Foundation, the project expanded into adjacent Rogue River tributaries with the goal of building high value local markets for the region's agricultural products
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Explores and develops market-based solutions.
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Explores and develops market-based solutions.
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Salmon-Safe Applegate 2006
Salmon-Safe Applegate is an innovative free market conservation initiative engaging southern Oregon’s agricultural sector in environmental sustainability while building high value local markets for the region’s agricultural products. The project is a collaborative effort with farmers, a watershed council, and other local stakeholders to protect water quality, wildlife, and riparian habitat in an ecologically important tributary to the Rogue River.
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Explores and develops market-based solutions.
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Salmon-Safe Golf: Developing a Market-based Initiative for Ecologically Sustainable Golf Course Development & Management
Salmon-Safe Golf is the nation’s first certification program linking golf course design and development to the protection of urban water quality and the preservation of an endangered species. The project leverages the Walker Foundation’s earlier investments in Salmon-Safe by extending Salmon-Safe’s innovative market-based program to the West Coast golf industry. The project met all of its startup milestones, including building partnerships with the Pacific Northwest and national golf industry to influence industry practices and successfully piloting the project with golf courses still in design as well as established sites. Like Salmon-Safe Communities, the ecologically sustainable residential development initiative that Walker funded for 2008, Salmon-Safe will be entirely funded by fees to developers beyond this startup phase.
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Explores and develops market-based solutions.
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San Diego Watermen's Association
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San Diego Watermen's Association Fishery Study and Dockside Meeting. (C/O Sand County Foundation as fiduciary)
Like most fisheries nationwide, the California Sea Urchin Fishery is regulated in a way that discourages fishermen from cooperating to conserve stocks or improve the quality of their product. The grant partners, including the Walker Foundation, funded a study conducted by fishermen of the San Diego Watermen’s Association to collect population data needed for improved management. The grant also funded meetings to report results of the study, and to solicit input from fishermen and experts on ways to improve the fishery. As a result, the San Diego Watermen’s Association is proposing a pilot program to show that both economic and conservation benefits will result by changing management from open access to ecosystem management based on area specific harvest rights.
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Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
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Explores and develops market-based solutions.
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Sustainable Harvest International
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Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
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Explores and develops market-based solutions.
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The Heritage Foundation
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Getting Spending and Taxes under Control
Thanks to excessive long-term spending obligations, the U.S. Federal Government’s budget is projected to swell to nearly 50 percent of the economy by 2050. To prevent such a drastic rise in federal spending, The Heritage Foundation seeks to show Americans the full picture of the federal budget – including long-term obligations from entitlement programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid – in order to generate public pressure for spending control. We’ll work to change the public’s view of entitlements and intergenerational obligations in the context of the long-term budget crisis, so that Americans embrace the need for structural changes to curb spending. In addition, we’ll strive to convince Americans that raising taxes harms growth and jobs and is not the solution to uncontrolled spending. Finally, we’ll work to change the congressional dynamics of entitlement reform to one of bipartisan support for serious restructuring and control of entitlements.
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Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
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Explores and develops market-based solutions.
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The Heritage Foundation
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Curbing Spending by Reframing the Politics of Entitlements
The U.S. Federal Government’s budget is projected to swell to nearly 50 percent of the economy by 2050, so The Heritage Foundation is seeking to show Americans the full picture of the federal budget – including long-term obligations from entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare – in order to generate public pressure for spending control. We’re working to change the public’s view of entitlements and intergenerational obligations in the context of the long-term budget crisis, so that Americans accept the need for structural changes to curb spending, especially those changes which don't raise taxes. Finally, we’re working to change the congressional dynamics of entitlement reform to one of bipartisan support for serious restructuring and control of entitlements.
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Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
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Explores and develops market-based solutions.
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The Heritage Foundation
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Heritage Foundation - 2006 Priority Issues
The Heritage Foundation formulates and promotes conservative public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense. In the past year, we have advanced this mission in many ways. Two covered in this report are 1) convincing lawmakers to see the value of “dynamic scoring” of tax proposals, and 2) helping to build a market-based health care system throughout the nation, starting with individual states.
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Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
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Explores and develops market-based solutions.
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The Nature Conservancy
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Implementing Ecosystem Valuation as a Global Conservation and Economic Development Strategy
Tourism to protected areas including World Heritage Sites is a significant contributor to economic development. However, policy decisions to protect the natural capital upon which the industry depends, tend not to reflect this. Consequently opportunities to maximize tourism's contribution to conservation and poverty alleviation are being lost. This project is working with park systems to quantify tourism's value and make policy recommendtaions for more effective market-based strategies to achieve financial sustainability.
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Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
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Investigates the effect of the global financial system and/or the monetary system in fostering a sustainable economy.
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Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
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Explores and develops market-based solutions.
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Implementing Ecosystem Valuation as a Global Conservation and Economic Development Strategy
Tourism and recreation, freshwater and fisheries are examples of ecosystem services which, due to inappropriate or non-existent pricing mechanisms are eroding the natural capital on which they depend. The resulting economic imbalance in the monetary system undermines the functioning of the free-market system such that the long-term provision of these essential societal services and the well-being of the people who depend upon them is threatened. This project proposes to address this economic imbalance by carrying out studies to place an economic value on ecosystem services and to develop market-based mechanisms and policy recommendations to facilitate the establishment of environmentally and financially sustainable pricing practices for ecosystem services at park systems in some of the most ecologically important regions of the world.
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Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
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Investigates the effect of the global financial system and/or the monetary system in fostering a sustainable economy.
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Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
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Explores and develops market-based solutions.
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The Nature Conservancy - Asia-Pacific Region
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Market Forces and Fishery Management in Micronesia and Hawaii
The Nature Conservancy will address the economic imbalance of island nations in Micronesia whose livelihoods and food sources are at risk from market forces, both internal and external, that are creating unsustainable fishing conditions while weakening traditional management systems. In response, we will work with Micronesian partners to assess the impact of internal and external market forces on traditional practices and marine resource sustainability; integrate rights-based and traditional management systems into combined approaches for Micronesia’s coastal fisheries; develop innovative sustainable financing options for coastal fisheries management; and lay the groundwork to roll out and refine these approaches across Micronesia within the framework of the Micronesia Challenge. If funding is approved to a second year, the project will be expand to Hawaii.
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Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
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Explores and develops market-based solutions.
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The New School
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An International Conference on Environmental Economics
The 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen has been perceived as a failure, while the consequences of global warming continue to mount. The leading nations of the world, however, hesitate to commit themselves to climate change mitigation measures. Attempting to establish both the urgency of the issue and to help overcome the standoff in international negotiations, The New School hosted a high level international conference on the “Economics of Climate Change” on April 9 -10, 2010.
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Investigates the effect of the global financial system and/or the monetary system in fostering a sustainable economy.
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Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
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The Prometheus Institute
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Carbon Tax Project
The Project’s goal is to inform and engage Americans in support of a carbon tax as the preferred market-friendly policy solution to the danger of catastrophic climate change. The Institute’s Carbon Tax Project responds both to the national need for market-friendly policy leadership on climate change, as well as the pressing need for policy organizations to more effectively engage the public in support of their ideas. Specifically, the Project will sponsor and promote research by eminent scholars to help develop an efficient and market-driven carbon tax policy, and will also help the policy proposal gain political, economic and popular legitimacy within the national climate change debate.
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Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
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Explores and develops market-based solutions.
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The University of Rhode Island
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Emerging Strategies for Improving Fisheries Management
Building upon the successful 2005 Fisheries workshop in Del Mar, CA, (supported by the Walker Fdn.) and arising from several important initiatives that emerged among the participants of that conference, the purpose of this workshop was to advance the cause of fisheries self-governance by assembling commercial fishermen in a 2007 workshop to discuss case studies of successful management, research and marketing.
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Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
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Explores and develops market-based solutions.
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University of California
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New Zealand Marine Fisheries Management Tour
Twenty US fishing industry leaders completed a one week study tour to New Zealand in March 2006 to learn firsthand about that nation's 20 year experience with individual transferable quotas. The tour was organized by the California Sea Grant Extension Program. Study tour participants are conducting outreach programs to share what they learned and a tour website is under construction.
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Explores and develops market-based solutions.
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World Wildlife Fund, Inc.
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Fishing Subsidies and the World Trade Organization
World Wildlife Fund (WWF) actively worked with private sector partners in our pursuit of new disciplines on fisheries subsidies, including the United States’ most important seafood trade organization, the National Fisheries Institute. We also aligned our work with parallel efforts by a group of governments that favor new, more trade-friendly rules in this area.
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Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
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Explores and develops market-based solutions.
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