Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Stakeholder engagement
One of the often overlooked components of nutrient trading programmes is
stakeholder engagement during the establishment phase. As there is still some skepticism
surrounding nutrient trading programmes, this raises the importance of including
stakeholders in the formation and rule discussions of these programmes. Early
stakeholder engagement will help create trust between potential buyers and sellers, and
the administrators of the trading programme; and help promote an active trading
programme.
Providing the infrastructure
A successful water quality trading programme needs to provide the appropriate
infrastructure. Some basic infrastructure elements for water quality trading programmes
include:
1.
An administrative agency (or agencies) to manage the programme, certify reductions
and trades, and monitor compliance. A water quality trading programme which involves
unregulated agricultural non-point sources may face several logistical and
administrative hurdles that can be mitigated by working closely with the agricultural
community and agricultural agencies to ensure programme support.
2.
A trading registry to track the nutrient reductions, credits and trades, and facilitate
compliance monitoring. A registry is simply a database that stores information on the
entities which generate and use credits.
3.
A forum where buyers and sellers can meet. Many point and non-point source trades
have involved a single point source locating non-point sources such as farmers one by
one and negotiating individual contracts with each farmer to provide a specified number
of nutrient reductions. For example, the Southern Minnesota Beet Sugar Cooperative
contracted with over 100 farmers to purchase phosphorus reductions to allow them to
expand their capacity and still meet their phosphorus discharge limit. This process can
be significantly streamlined through the establishment of a central marketplace that
allows buyers to easily identify sellers and vice-versa.
Evaluating success
Monitoring is an important component of any nutrient trading programme and is used
to assess the success of the programme. Regulated sources typically have some form of
monitoring already in place as monitoring is required to prove regulatory compliance.
However, unregulated sources, commonly non-point sources, do not have any monitoring
requirements. As a proxy for the direct monitoring of non-point source nutrient losses, the
BMPs implemented to reduce nutrient losses can be monitored to ensure they are installed
and properly functioning. Similarly, water quality at the watershed level should also be
monitored to determine whether the watershed's water quality goal is being attained. As
there is typically a lag time between programme implementation and any improvement in
water quality, this should be a long-term commitment. In many trading programmes,
watershed monitoring is often only cursory and ensuring BMP implementation is
frequently left to the buyers of the associated nutrient reductions.
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