Alberta’s Drive To Use Market-based
Instruments For Ecosystem Services Provision
Author(s)
G. L. Kerr & H. Bjornlund
Abstract
Governments globally are struggling to reverse negative trends of decreased
ecosystem function. Due to their nature as landscape drainage ‘sinks’, aquatic
ecosystems are particularly in jeopardy. In response to some of the significant
impacts on land and aquatic ecosystems, the province of Alberta (Canada) has
recently introduced institutional, legislative and policy initiatives explicitly
promoting ecosystem services (ES) production through market-based
instruments (MBIs). This paper presents a brief account of the current state of
aquatic ES knowledge and use in Alberta. Further, the paper explores the critical
role that property rights play in MBIs, as a design criterion and applies this to the
key legislation and policies in Alberta that currently enable MBIs. With few
MBIs currently enabled, this paper evaluates the property rights regime for one
MBI, the current water market in southern Alberta. The strengths and
weaknesses of the property rights for water transfers provide some lessons for
Alberta as it implements new MBIs for ES provision.
Keywords: ecosystem service, market-based instruments, property rights, water
markets.
1 Introduction
Governments globally are struggling to reverse negative trends of decreased
ecosystem function. Due to their nature as landscape drainage ‘sinks’, aquatic
ecosystems are particularly in jeopardy. The Ecosystem Services (ES) approach
has evolved from this struggle [1]. The complex nature of ES has promoted a
number of governments to look beyond their current ‘command and control’
Keywords
ecosystem service, market-based instruments, property rights, water
markets
Related Book
Other papers in this volume
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