An analysis of stream mitigation banking and the challenges of implementing market-based approaches to environmental conservation. Market-based approaches to environmental conservation have been increasingly prevalent since the early 1990s. The goal of these markets is to reduce environmental harm not by preventing it, but by pricing it. A housing development on land threaded with streams, for example, can divert them into underground pipes if the developer pays to restore streams elsewhere. But does this increasingly common approach actually improve environmental well-being? In Streams of Revenue, Rebecca Lave and Martin Doyle answer this question by analyzing the history, implementation, and environmental outcomes of one of these markets: stream mitigation banking. In stream mitigation banking, an entrepreneur speculatively restores a stream, generating “stream credits” that can be purchased by a developer to fulfill regulatory requirements of the Clean Water Act. Tracing mitigation banking from conceptual beginnings to implementation, the authors find that in practice it is very difficult to establish equivalence between the ecosystems harmed and those that are restored, and to cope with the many sources of uncertainty that make positive restoration outcomes unlikely. Lave and Doyle argue that market-based approaches have failed to deliver on conservation goals and call for a radical reconfiguration of the process.

"Describes the accomplishments during phase one of the two phase National Wetland Mitigation Banking Study authorized by Section 307(d) of the Water Resources Development Act of 1990"--P. 1.

This document reports wetland mitigation banking experience to date. The Environmental Law Institute conducted an inventory of banks that supplemented information gathered as part of the National Wetlands Mitigation Banking Study conducted by the Corps of Engineers Institute for Water Resources (IWR). Additional information was gathered by IWR in a detailed study of selected banks. Wetland mitigation banking offers the potential for restoration and conservation of ecologically meaningful and robust wetland systems, planning on a landscape scale, and the harnessing of entrepreneurial as well as public funding to the task of wetland compensation. It provides practical advantages in monitoring and management of compensatory wetlands. Like other forms of compensatory mitigation, it presupposes a wetland policy that continues to allow the lawful destruction of certain natural wetlands. Its potential utility must be measured not in comparison with a ban on wetland conversions, but on whether it can improve upon current compensatory methods. It appears that it can.

Recognizing the importance of wetland protection, the Bush administration in 1988 endorsed the goal of "no net loss" of wetlands. Specifically, it directed that filling of wetlands should be avoided, and minimized when it cannot be avoided. When filling is permitted, compensatory mitigation must be undertaken; that is, wetlands must be restored, created, enhanced, and, in exceptional cases, preserved, to replace the permitted loss of wetland area and function, such as water quality improvement within the watershed. After more than a dozen years, the national commitment to "no net loss" of wetlands has been evaluated. This new book explores the adequacy of science and technology for replacing wetland function and the effectiveness of the federal program of compensatory mitigation in accomplishing the nation's goal of clean water. It examines the regulatory framework for permitting wetland filling and requiring mitigation, compares the mitigation institutions that are in use, and addresses the problems that agencies face in ensuring sustainability of mitigated wetlands over the long term. Gleaning lessons from the mixed results of mitigation efforts to date, the book offers 10 practical guidelines for establishing and monitoring mitigated wetlands. It also recommends that federal, state, and local agencies undertake specific institutional reforms. This book will be important to anyone seeking a comprehensive understanding of the "no net loss" issue: policy makers, regulators, environmental scientists, educators, and wetland advocates.