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The future health of the Chesapeake Bay and its watershed significantly depends on the actions of private landowners, as collectively they own the majority of the land in the watershed. New and innovative market-based approaches have emerged to offer realistic financial incentives to landowners within the watershed. The Bay Bank helps private landowners and operators of farm and forest land in the Chesapeake region access multiple ecosystem service markets, as well as traditional conservation programs. The additional stewardship activities generated through the Bay Bank’s market mechanisms benefits local communities by increasing the economic stability of farm and forest lands and providing cleaner air and water and healthier ecosystems. Although the Pinchot Institute looks forward to expanding this idea nationwide, the Bay Bank pilot program will be conducted in the states of Maryland and Delaware in the Fall of 2009.

The Bay Bank connects private landowners to market-based programs by providing:

Market education and outreach
The Bay Bank makes sense of ecosystem market and conservation program rules to increase participation, save conservation buyers and landowners time, and ensure environmental gains. By using the Bay Bank, buyers and sellers can be certain of credible credits.

LandServer
LandServer is a web-based reporting and analysis tool that will allow landowners and operators to determine their eligibility for current and emerging ecosystem markets and traditional conservation programs.

Conservation action education
After learning about their conservation funding opportunities in LandServer, landowners can choose to enroll in the Bay Bank. The Bay Bank website will include a section that identifies potential conservation actions, needed contracts/permits, current market demand, and other factors, such as need for conservation easements, liability, and ability to bundle credits with other markets.

Market facilitation
In order for the Bay Bank to succeed in its mission to use innovative, market-based tools to facilitate conservation in the Chesapeake, clear standards for participation in each market area in which credits will be transacted must be developed.

• Landowner eligibility,
• Verification and certification of practices generating credits,
• Credit definition,
• Stewardship requirements for maintaining credits over time, and
• Others needed to ensure only high-quality credits are transacted.

• Habitat Conservation – The Bay Bank is not only providing guidance for landowner involvement in current regulatory markets, but is also facilitating the development of voluntary habitat markets for bog turtle, Delmarva fox squirrel, Atlantic White cedar, Ancient Sand Ridge Dune forest, and eastern brook trout.
• Forest Conservation – The Bay Bank is educating landowners to help them understand their options for generating income from forest mitigation and linking them with interested buyers. The Maryland Forest Conservation Act requires developers to mitigate their impacts on forests resulting from development activity. When this mitigation cannot be accomplished on-site, developers are allowed to look to private landowners for places to plant trees or mitigation banks.
• Water Quality Protection – The Pinchot Institute and World Resources Institute have assessed how landowners can participate in state regulatory water quality trading programs. The Bay Bank is also providing access to credits and registry services to voluntary water quality trading programs.
• Conservation Programs – Through a five-year partnership with the National Resources Conservation Service, the Bay Bank is targeting 2009 funding for agricultural operators to implement conservation actions that reduce pollutants through the Environmental Quality Incentives Program’s Cooperative Conservation Partnership Initiative. In future years, the Bay Bank will leverage conservation program dollars with ecosystem service markets.
• Carbon Sequestration – The Bay Bank is building tools to help landowners understand the current status of carbon markets, plan actions related to the generation of carbon credits, calculate carbon stocks, and prepare landowners for future policy initiatives.

The Bay Bank will simplify access to existing and emerging markets through translation, clarification, and centralization of existing regulatory market rules.

Verification
The Bay Bank will facilitate a verification process for easy technical service, training and registry needs of the landowners.