Vol. 3 Issue 2

Partnership News
Willamette Partnership
Newsletter April 20, 2010

Re p o r t

Future is Bright for Partnership and Market
Development

A New Phase for Expanding the Pace,
Scope, and Effectiveness of Restoration

-David Primozich , Executive Director Emeritus

-Bobby Cochran, Executive Director

Last September, as many of you know, a broad group of
stakeholders agreed on a General Crediting Protocol for the
Willamette Basin using the Counting on the Environment
process. Essentially, this is a first of its kind definition of
how multiple credits are created and traded in an ecosystem
marketplace. Over the last few months, we’ve made contact
with stakeholders in other parts of Oregon, Washington and
Idaho to determine where opportunities exist to share our
locally-grown protocol, process lessons and infrastructure.
It is clear that we need good market design (that is
ecologically-driven, credible and transparent). It is also clear
that we need a supply of verified and registered projects so
people can see the type and quality of credits that could be
available. Because a group of dedicated people put their
heads together over the course of the last several years, we
have the first of these, a solid market design. Now,
however, we need to ensure a steady supply of projects
enters into the system.
Promoting supply is the next stage of market
development. That’s where I will now be focusing my
attention. I will be leaving the Willamette Partnership to
lead a new Ecosystem Services Department at The
Freshwater Trust – not-for-profit that has made a
substantial commitment to pushing forward on this next
stage of market development. The Freshwater Trust brings
experience coordinating high quality restoration projects
and a firm understanding that it will take lots of restoration
professionals to produce the volume and scale of projects
needed – both for our ecological goals and anticipated
market demand.
The Willamette Partnership Board of Directors
confidently named Bobby Cochran as my successor at the
Willamette Partnership, which enables the Partnership to
focus closely on market design, protocols, and
infrastructure in the Northwest - clearly setting the stage for
continued credible and transparent market operations. This
move will enable all of us to focus on making markets work
in a way that promotes conservation at a scale that makes a
difference.

I can’t imagine a more exciting time to be part of the
Willamette Partnership. We’ve generated an enormous
amount of momentum over the last five years. We have
the only multi-credit package of ecosystem market
protocols with agency approvals, we have four gung-ho
staff, a great volunteer, and a Board that’s ready to push
the use of ecosystem markets to achieve real
environmental benefits. I’m honored to be coming in
behind David’s pioneering work to be the next
Executive Director of the Willamette Partnership.
We’ve got a lot of work ahead of us. In the next
three years, we’ll be moving the Counting on the
Environment crediting protocols from their pilot status
into a full-fledged program that results in better, more
comprehensive mitigation of unavoidable impacts to
our natural resources. The Partnership also will be
working with other watersheds in the Northwest to
build their capacity to leverage market-based tools to
achieve their environmental goals.
There’s no way we’ll be doing this alone. We’ll
continue to rely on the network of people doing great
work on different pieces of this puzzle. This includes
restoration professionals generating credits, our
business partners as buyers of ecosystem services, and
the agencies governing natural resources.
So, as we move forward into this next phase of
work, please feel free to stop by, talk, and ask questions.
I’ll probably be in touch with a lot of you here in the
coming months.

Increasing the
pace, scope, and
effectiveness of
conservation

Willamette Partnership — 2550 SW Hillsboro Hwy., Hillsboro, OR 97123 — (503) 681-5112
www.willamettepartnership.org

Page 2

Extending to New Watersheds: Discovering Opportunities
Special points of interest:
Future is Bright for
Partnership and Market
Development
A New Phase for
Expanding the Pace,
Scope and Effectiveness
of Restoration
Extending to New
Watersheds: Discovering
Opportunities
Combating Credit
Confusion

Wood violet

- Devin Judge-Lord, Market Specialist

In the last year we’ve discovered a
number of loosely connected trading
discussions in watersheds across the
Northwest, each still needing a few
pieces to the ecosystem market puzzle.
Our extension efforts have introduced
us to many passionate people curious
about our tools and working examples.
This new cooperation is reenergizing
discussions and inspiring people to take
on the challenge. We can now show
that credible verification and
transparent tracking are not
insurmountable barriers and offer
market infrastructure to the region. The
challenge now is to reach out to the
right people who can lead necessary
local discussions and decision making.
For example a group in the Yakima
Basin that has been meeting at the wine
bar is now working to expand the
Counting on the Environment model
to meet their needs, and the Rogue
Basin might see river restoration
helping to meet temperature
regulations.

Another inspiring discovery was
significant interest among conservation
groups, trusts, and governments in
using an ecosystem accounting system
to track the performance of their
investments. We imagine a world
where these groups can invest in
finished, verified, and registered
priority restoration projects developed
by skilled private and nonprofit
professionals, like those at The
Freshwater Trust.
Unfortunately, places where trading
has been most discussed like Klamath,
Spokane, and Boise also tend to be the
most burdened with legal uncertainty.
However, large scale trading could
break loose quickly, and the
Partnership will be ready to collaborate
on regional infrastructure needs.
Investing now in extending and
nationally standardizing the tools that
the Partnership and others have
developed will keep up the momentum
and enthusiasm, overcome roadblocks,
and assure that emerging markets
achieve the highest quality ecological
benefits.

Combating Credit Confusion
-Mac Martin, Water Resource Analyst

Mt. Hood perennial stream

Over the last decade, credits for
ecosystem services have been
voluntarily purchased by people and
organizations interested in offsetting
their impacts to the environment. The
most popular of these services has
been carbon. It became readily
apparent as the voluntary carbon
market matured that, without a
sophisticated tracking mechanism, the

carbon credits circulating within it
would be suspect—as their longevity
and ownership rights could not be
guaranteed. The carbon market’s initial
response to this need proved
inadequate and it was justly criticized.
The Willamette Partnership took this
lesson to heart. Now, through a
strategic partnership with a global
leader in market development, the

Willamette Partnership — 2550 SW Hillsboro Hwy., Hillsboro, OR 97123 — (503) 681-5112
www.willamettepartnership.org

Vol. 3 Issue 2

Page 3

Combating Credit Confusion (continued)
Partnership has a fully-operational
tracking mechanism that will guarantee
the longevity and ownership rights of
credits developed using Counting on the
Environment standards. It is called the
Markit Environmental Registry.
The Markit Environmental Registry
tracks the custody of credits. The
simplicity of this description belies the
complexity and importance of the
function. Standards serve markets by
ensuring a credit represents a real
environmental benefit. But, without a
reliable, centralized and universal method
for following these benefits over time,
standards are of questionable use. Our
registry will:
1. Prevent credits from being sold
multiple times
2. Ensure a listed credit always
represents real environmental
benefits.
3. Allow for the legitimate sale of
multiple ecosystem services from
a single restoration site.

This third entry is of critical
importance to the Willamette
Partnership which decided, early on, that
being able to sell multiple ecosystem
service types from a single project is
essential for attracting participants to the
market. The fact that this advanced
functionality is integrated into the
registry makes it the first of its kind
operating in the United State, and
perhaps the world.
For those of you interested in
exploring the registry, please access it
Eliot Glacier runoff
online at the following address: http://
www.markitenvironmental.com/
Willamette Partnership
bawregistryview.php?pg=prj. The
is praised at Portland’s
public view lets people see what
City Club forum on
projects are generating credits, how
green markets for
many credits have been issued and who
cutting edge
owns these credits. More projects and
environmental
credits will be listed on the registry over
entrepreneurial
the next year so check back periodically.

To receive regular updates on the Partnerships
progress, subscribe to our newsletter by going to
www.willamettepartnership.org and signing up for
wp-news

leadership. For the
complete story please
visit the news section on
the Willamette
Partnership’s website.

History
The Willamette Partnership formed in 2004 to capture the momentum created
upon completion of the Willamette Restoration Strategy. The Strategy
articulated a vision for ecological health and economic vitality in the Willamette
Basin and outlined critical actions needed to achieve success. Working with
stakeholder leaders who developed the Strategy, the Partnership formed to
accelerate needed innovation. One of these innovations is the establishment of
an integrated ecosystem marketplace
Willamette Partnership — 2550 SW Hillsboro Hwy., Hillsboro, OR 97123 — (503) 681-5112
www.willamettepartnership.org