Good afternoon,

Thank you to all that attended our 2/22 webinar update.

We have been briskly attending to the transition the body of the ESM work to the ESM Consortium that will be housed under the Soil Health Institute. Corporate firms continue to join as Consortium members signaling the momentum that our effort had garnered nationally.

We  have started to design the governance and framework for the Consortium to ensure that we leverage the collective expertise and experience of all members and stakeholders and advance the science-backed research agenda in a transparent and collaborative fashion. We will share more news on the assembly of the Consortium as we achieve our milestones.

Look out for the announcement of our new dedicated ESM Consortium web site [www.ecosystemservicesmarket.org] that will be live by April 1st! The site will be packed full with updates, resources, news, and content mapping our progress.

Our collaboration with the Gold Standard is progressing well to achieve alignment between ESM and their “Value Chain (Scope 3) Interventions – Guidance for Soil Organic Carbon.”  We are planning on conducting joint pilots with the Gold Standard this year to help achieve this.

We presented the updated integrated draft ESM protocol to our Founding and Legacy Consortium members this week in Washington D.C. Members have exhibited a great deal of interest in enrolling their supply sheds in our pilot phase that commenced this year and will run until the national program launch in 2022.

My work to build the enterprise model for a new entity that will oversee the deployment of a functioning ESM market in 2022 continues. My goal is to have that completed along with the business plan by the end of June.

We have engaged Woodruff as the agency of record for the Consortium. They were very helpful in getting the release out announcing the early Founding Circle Consortium members and the appointment of Debbie Reed as the Consortium’s executive director.

Thank you for your continued interest and support of the ESM program.

Best,

Sean