About The Meeting

The Global Katoomba meeting brings together leading policy makers, major financial institutions, business leaders, the environmental community and local indigenous groups to discuss the current scope and potential of ecosystem markets – carbon, water, biodiversity – to address environmental problems. Climate change, water pollution, and biodiversity loss threatens the natural infrastructure of our planet and human well-being, but the time is ripe for a major event to drive action and bring together these different sectors to develop strategies that will match the scale and urgency of the environmental issues we face today.

The meeting’s schedule includes keynote speeches by leading public and private figure  (see the working agenda) and moderated discussions among a panel of environmental and market experts. During the moderated discussions, panelists will update us on the current state of the ecosystem markets, identify the challenges that must be overcome, and share proven approaches that can be built upon in the future.

We hope that Global Katoomba is another opportunity to find solutions that have a real, measurable impact on our political and economic systems in the U.S. and across the globe.

On behalf of Katoomba and our co-sponsors, including World Resources Institute, the Smithsonian Institute, the Packard Foundation, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, EPRI, the U.S. Forest Service, USAID, the Natural Resource Conservation Service, we hope you will be able to join us for this timely and important event.

About Katoomba

The Katoomba Group (KG) is an international working group composed of leading experts from forest and energy industries, research institutions, the financial world, and environmental NGOs dedicated to advancing markets for some of the ecosystem services provided by forests – such as watershed protection, biodiversity habitat, and carbon storage. The Katoomba Group seeks to address key challenges for developing markets for ecosystem services, from enabling legislation to establishing new market institutions, to developing strategies for pricing and marketing, and monitoring performance. The Katoomba Group builds on the knowledge and experience of three hundred network members. The group met for the first time in Katoomba, Australia in 1999. Subsequent meetings have taken place in Vancouver, Rio de Janeiro, London, Tokyo, Zürich, Bangkok, Uganda, Portland, OR and Sao Paulo, Brazil.