The Bay Bank: testing market mechanisms for ecosystem restoration of Chesapeake forests

The health of the Chesapeake Bay has been degraded after decades of unregulated non-point source pollution flowing into the Bay from its tributaries. The Bay Bank will be a regional ecosystem marketplace where buyers and sellers can identify, calculate, buy, and sell multiple ecosystem service credits and will promote market transactions where an established market does not yet exist for Chesapeake landowners.

The goal of the Bay Bank marketplace is to improve the health of the Chesapeake Bay by encouraging private landowners to protect valuable open space while adopting stewardship practices that enhance water quality, protect streams, and improve ecosystem health and function by allowing landowners to trade credits for various ecosystem services they provide. The Bay Bank will seek to integrate tools into one regional, multi-credit, ecosystem service platform and build upon existing national, state, and local ecosystem markets, including: carbon sequestration, water quality and nutrient trading, forest and wetland mitigation, and biodiversity and habitat banking.

The first two of six steps in the Bay Bank project are underway with the help of the Pinchot Institutes partners: USDA Forest Service/Northeaster Area State and Private Forestry, Alliances for the Chesapeake Bay, Chesapeake Bay Program, Maryland DNR Forest Service, PA DCNR, and Virginia Department of Forestry.

Project leader: Eric Sprague , Research Associate