(Week Readings 2) -Hoekstra: Confronting a biome crisis -Loss of species is great concern -Need to look beyond "hotspots," and looking at entire at-risk ecosystems -Biodiversity and ecosystem services are at greatest risk due to disparities in extent of habitat loss and protection (humans converting natural habitats) -Habitat loss most extensive in tropical dry forests, temperate broadleaf/mixed forests, temperate grasslands and savannas, and Mediterranean forests, woodlands and scrub. -Tundra and boreal forest biomes intact -Greatest-risk biomes: temperate grasslands and savannas & Mediterranean forest, woodlands and scrub -Crisis ecoregions on every continent -By improving degree and distribution of habitat protection both within and among biomes and ecoregions, we will capture greatest breadth of ecological diversity of both species and ecosystems Ellison/Daily: Making Conservation Profitable -Con Ex: Conservation Exchange -"Shares" in services of nature could be bought/sold "Carbon credits" would reap revenues depending on forests' capacity to suck heat-trapping CO2 from air. -"Biodiversity credits" would fluctuate in value according to condition of critical habitats given on piece of land -Sold by owners of protected land and bought by business execs as a way to meet moral/legal obligations to compensate for environmental harm done elsewhere -Criticism: Drive for profits can save planet? -Kyoto Protocol: draft international treaty to fight climate change -Interest in "Carbon credit" market-Allowing countries to gain credit for reducing gge's y investing in "offsets" that yield the carbon credits -Controversial: Firms may be encouraged to take easy way out by buying pollution permits instead of reducing pollution -Conservation Banking Industry: Says developers must compensate for harm they do to wetlands and habitats critical to threatened and endangered species. Obliged to restore destroyed habitat somewhere else, if they destroyed it. -Criticisms: even best managed "banks" can't supply range of services provided by the ecosystems whose destruction they mean to offset (no real way to replace them) -Global Forest Ecosystem Fund: Idea of Jenkins -Would allow investor to purchase shares in newly planted forests and earn income from sources that might include sustainable timber, carbon credits salinity credits and biodiversity credits. Phelps: REDD