The Rappahannock River Basin Symposium Steering Committee welcomes the assistance of Jacquelyn Holley Pogue with design and facilitation of the symposium. Jacqueline has been a university teacher, psychotherapist, partner in a nation wide consulting firm, facilitator/mediator for organizations, consultant to corporations and mentor for  executives, in addition to her role as founder of coalitions and a  community organizer providing [...]

Just released from the Rappahannock River Basin Commission:
2009 Rappahannock River Basin Symposium
Creating a Bay-friendly Economy
The Rappahannock River Basin Commission, in conjunction with The Virginia Department of Forestry, Conserv, and other partners, will host the 2009 Rappahannock River Symposium called Creating a Bay-friendly Economy. The symposium will be a highly [...]

Yesterday, at the Chesapeake Bay Reathorization Hearing, Subcommittee on Water Resources and Environment, amid impressive, heartfelt, bipartisan testimonies and commentaries of folks around the Bay, including Tom Perriello, Secretary Preston Bryant, and Gerry Connolly, were the words of Rob Wittman, and from EPA, Chuck Fox, sowing the seeds of a 21st century Bay-friendly economy:
Excerpt from [...]

The second meeting of the Virginia 25x’25 State Alliance will be held on the campus of Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, VA on Tuesday, October 6th.  A flyer announcing the event has been posted on the Sustainability Blackboard. This session will begin at 2 PM and be held in Moody Hall.
The meeting has [...]

Governor Signs Conservation Markets Legislation

Friday, 28 March 2008

A bill directing the Conservation Commission to study how conservation markets could benefit working farms was signed by the Governor on March 25 in Seattle.
The bill, Substitute Senate Bill 6805, calls for a study of the efficacy of conservation markets and if the study indicates that [...]

The second of seven draft reports issued by federal agencies on the Bay contains a recommendation on Ecosystem Markets:
From page 26 of the draft report, Focusing Resources to Restore and Protect the Chesapeake Bay and its Tributary Waters:
Chesapeake Bay protection and restoration must also involve the private sector in order to reach the level and [...]

Graves Mountain Lodge, Syria, Virginia…
Eldon James, staff member to the Commission, proposed the following framework for the launch of the Rapahannock Exchange Initiative. 
The Rappahannock River Basin Commission, working with Conserv, the Virginia Department of Forestry, the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation, and the Virginia Ecosystem Services Interagency Team, will sponsor a fall [...]

Tomorrow, Conserv will post the briefing presented today to the Rappahannock River Basin Commission on the kickoff symposium for the Rappahannock Exchange on December 9 in Fredericksburg.

Tomorrow at 9:30, Conserv staff will brief the Rivanna River Basin Commission TAC on ecosystem services in the Rivanna Basin. The outline of the briefing includes:
1. THE BIG VISION - BIOREGIONAL MARKETS TO RESTORE KEYSTONE ENVIRONMENTAL ASSETS
2. The Current Conservation Model
3. Ecosystem Services - Another Conservation Model for the 21st Century
4. Aquatic Ecosystem Services
5. Emerging [...]

A plane ride to the great northwest state of Washington can be a good thing….
The O’Hare bookstore was filled with goodies, and one in particular caught my eye—The World is Curved, by David M. Smick. Picking it up, then putting it down, thinking it was a flip retort to Hot, Flat, and Crowded, by Tom [...]

Yesterday, Richard Price, President of The Folsom Group, a nationally known expert in sustainable design and planning with more than 25 years of experience, offered his time and talents to become Conserv’s newest Board member.
Richards’s work includes the campus planning, sustainable community planning and the design of numerous commercial and residential green buildings. While Director [...]

Legislators, community leaders, farmers, and economic developers are closely watching the progress of bioenergy production in Southern Virginia. In searching for innovative solutions, Southern Virginia Bioenergy: Making Innovation Work conference scheduled for Tuesday, October 6, 2009, will offer all stakeholders an opportunity to focus on Virginia’s renewable energy agenda. [...]

The City of Charlottesville, County of Albemarle, Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority, The Rivanna River Basin Commission,  Congressman Tom Perriello, The World Resources Institute, and others have provided letters of support for a Virginia Department of Forestry proposal to undertake a pilot project for payment of regulating ecosystem services (PRES) in the South Fork Rivanna [...]

As reported last month on the Katoomba Group’s Ecosystem Marketplace website, in a post called Building Oregon’s Ecosystem Marketplace by Sara Vickerman, the Oregon Legislature on July 23 drafted a framework that will begin to develop the “circumstances under which providers of ecosystem services can combine different environmental values in one transaction without double-dipping”.
Vickerman goes [...]

Yesterday, the Conserv Board of Directors initiated a search process to expand the size of the Board of Directors from two to approximately eight members. Criteria to be used in the search include entrepreneureal experience, race and gender diversity. More to come in the weeks ahead.

In the August 31 opening post of this series, we propose 10 pillars for the design and creation of new bioregional marketplaces for industrialized nations:

Creation-care ministries of faith and ethics communities
Biomimicry
Ecosystem health goal setting
Ecological footprinting
Holistic health care
Bioregionalism
Currency diversity
Ecosystem services
Sustainable macroeconomic theory
Whole system design and facilitation

In today’s post, we will discuss Pillar 6: Bioregionalism.  Conserv is [...]