IUCN, the International Union for Conservation of Nature

Markets, and the economic incentives that drive them, are the main linkage between landscapes and livelihoods in most parts of the world today.  A fundamental distinction, however, must be drawn between goods and services for which markets are relatively well-established, and other significant landscape benefits for which markets are thin or non-existent such as payment for environmental services. The former category includes most agricultural commodities as well as timber and some widely-traded non-timber products, plus high value landscape services such as tourism. The latter category includes a wide range of ecosystem services, such as watershed protection, carbon sequestration, pollination, landscape beauty and genetic diversity, for which no markets (or only immature markets) exist at present.