Doctoral Dissertation Research: Ecosystem Commodification Through Commercial Wetland Mitigation Banking Practice in the United States

商业湿地缓解银行是一种基于市场的环境政策，自1992年以来在美国发展起来。 该政策允许个人通过从湿地银行购买信用来满足清洁水法第404条的要求，而不是建立自己的湿地恢复，以减轻他们对湿地的拟议影响。 商业湿地银行是私人开发商在预期信贷需求的情况下创造的大片恢复湿地。 本博士论文研究项目的总体目标是澄清创建湿地市场的独特问题，将其视为一系列生态系统服务，与现在常见的单个空气或水污染物单位市场形成对比。 这项研究将使用生态实地考察，关键的线人访谈，历史文献和空间分析，调查的过程中，湿地功能的市场已经创建和稳定在过去十年。 它将集中在两个地区，采用银行业的做法早，但在鲜明对比的方式：明尼苏达州和芝加哥区的美国陆军工程兵团。 虽然湿地缓解银行是一个非常有前途的政策工具，有一些热情的支持者，其生态和经济特征主要是假设，而不是调查。 本项目将一起研究这些相关功能。 该项目将是定量和定性的调查将包括一个区域研究和一个扩展的案例研究的一个单一的交易和一个银行在每个地区。 区域研究将广泛描述社交网络，技术，景观功能的变化，以及商业战略，伴随着湿地缓解银行业在芝加哥地区和明尼苏达州的崛起的发展。 文献研究和访谈工作将绘制监管机构，私人资本和湿地科学家之间的社会和政治网络，这些网络创造，传播和制度化了银行业的惯例。 以地理信息系统为基础的空间分析将提供有关该区域湿地景观结构和功能变化的信息。 对单一交易的个案研究旨在为区域研究所勾画的大致轮廓提供实际内容。 研究活动将密切审查湿地功能从受影响地点“转移”到河岸地点的过程。 景观分析、水文模拟、并与参考地点进行实地比较，以探讨建立“等值”的物理基础这项研究的结果将表明，在美国环境政策的大趋势下，银行业务有可能为湿地功能创造一个稳定的市场，公共产品的私人利益，如清洁的空气和清洁的水。 该项目将为美国关于湿地政策未来的非常活跃和持续的辩论做出及时的贡献。 近年来，“污染信用交易”扩大到广泛的空气和水污染物，并跨越国界，因为贸易协定引导市场关系扩展到生态系统服务领域，而生态系统服务通常被视为公共非市场商品。 本届政府最近加强了其承诺，即建立以市场为基础的政策工具，作为解决环境政策问题的主要途径。 总的来说，这些政策背离了美国环境管理的历史趋势，要成功地实施这些政策，就必须彻底了解生态系统服务市场的创建过程。 具体而言，这项研究的结果将是利益的大量人口的监管机构参与清洁水法管理，其中许多人只是最近才遇到银行的做法。 由于银行业是一个复杂的监管安排，尚未引起公众或非营利环境团体的大量关注，因此将在这些团体中传播本研究的结果，以促进对银行政策特征的理解。 此外，湿地缓解银行很少受到学术界的关注。 该项目将是第一个使用社会科学和自然科学的综合方法来研究银行业的项目。 作为博士论文研究改进奖，该奖项还将提供支持，使有前途的学生建立一个强大的独立的研究生涯。

Commercial wetland mitigation banking is a market-based environmental policy that has developed in the United States since 1992. The policy allows individuals to fulfill the requirements of Section 404 of the Clean Water Act by purchasing credits from a wetland bank rather than building their own wetland restoration to mitigate their proposed impact to a wetland. Commercial wetland banks are large tracts of restored wetland created by private developers in anticipation of credit demand. The general objectives of this doctoral dissertation research project are to clarify the unique problems of creating a market for wetlands, conceived of as a bundle of ecosystem services, in contrast with the now-common markets for units of individual air or water pollutants. This research will use ecological fieldwork, key informant interviews, documentary histories, and spatial analysis to investigate the process by which a market in wetland functions has been created and stabilized over the past decade. It will focus on two regions that adopted banking practices early, but in sharply contrasting ways: the state of Minnesota and the Chicago District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. While wetland mitigation banking is a very promising policy tool with a number of enthusiastic supporters, both its ecological and economic features are largely assumed rather than investigated. This project will examine these related features together. This project will be both quantitative and qualitative in nature The investigation will be composed of a regional study and an extended case study of a single transaction and a single bank in each region. The regional study will describe broadly the development of social networks, technologies, landscape functional changes, and business strategies that have accompanied the rise of a wetland mitigation banking industry in both the Chicago area and in Minnesota. Documentary research and interview-based work will map the social and political networks between regulators, private capital, and wetland scientists that have created, spread, and institutionalized the conventions of banking. GIS-based spatial analysis will provide information on the structural and functional changes in the wetland landscape of the region. The case study of a single transaction is intended to give practical content to the broad outlines sketched by the regional study. Research activities will closely examine the process of "moving" wetland functions from the site of impact to the bank site. Metrics of landscape analysis, hydrologic modeling, and fieldwork-based comparison with reference sites will be used to explore the physical basis for the creation of "equivalence" between the impact and mitigation sites of the transaction.Results of this research will indicate the potential for banking practices to create a stable market for wetland functions within the larger trend in United States environmental policy towards using market forces to create private interests in public goods such as clean air and clean water. The project will make a timely contribution to a very active and ongoing debate about the future of wetlands policy in the United States. Recent years have seen the expansion of "pollution credits trading" to a broad range of air and water pollutants, and an expansion across national borders as trade agreements guide the expansion of market relations into the domain of ecosystem services, which have usually been conceived of as public non-market goods. The current Administration recently reinforced its commitment to establishing market-based policy tools as the primary way of resolving environmental policy problems. In general, such policies are a departure from the historical trends of environmental management in the United States, and their successful implementation requires a thorough understanding of the process of creating markets in ecosystem services. Specifically, the results of this study will be of interest to the large population of regulators involved in Clean Water Act administration, many of whom have only recently encountered banking practices. Because banking is a complex regulatory arrangement that has not yet attracted a great deal of attention from the public or from non-profit environmental groups, the results of this study will be disseminated among these groups to foster an understanding of the features of banking policy. Furthermore, wetland mitigation banking has received little scholarly attention. This project will be one of the first to examine banking using integrated approaches of the social and natural sciences. As a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement award, this award also will provide support to enable a promising student to establish a strong independent research career.