Our work on “Estimating the Size and Impact of the Ecological Restoration Economy,” was cited in the announcement for a recent presidential memorandum on “Mitigating Impacts on Natural Resources from Development and Encouraging Related Private Investment,” aimed at The Secretaries of Defense, Interior, Agriculture, EPA Administrator, and NOAA Administrator.
The memo …”encourage[s] private investment in restoration and public-private partnerships, and help foster opportunities for businesses or non-profit organizations with relevant expertise to successfully achieve restoration and conservation objectives.”
It goes on to say…
“Section 1. Policy. It shall be the policy of the Departments of Defense, the Interior, and Agriculture; the Environmental Protection Agency; and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; and all bureaus or agencies within them (agencies)….
Large-scale plans and analysis should inform the identification of areas where development may be most appropriate, where high natural resource values result in the best locations for protection and restoration, or where natural resource values are irreplaceable. Furthermore, because doing so lowers long-term risks to our environment and reduces timelines of development and other projects, agency policies should seek to encourage advance compensation, including mitigation bank-based approaches, in order to provide resource gains before harmful impacts occur. The design and implementation of those policies should be crafted to result in predictability sufficient to provide incentives for the private and non-governmental investments often needed to produce successful advance compensation. Wherever possible, policies should operate similarly across agencies and be implemented consistently within them.”
Did the Executive Office just require the use of watershed planning for mitigation markets?! This is something I’ve been encouraging for years. It was originally talked about in the National Research Council’s 2001 evaluation, and I wrote about how it could work effectively back in 2010.
Shoulders have been officially brushed off…
