This project has its origins in a conference on ecosystem services that Gretchen Daily of the Stanford Biology Department, Geoff Heal of the Columbia Business School, and Peter Raven, Director of the Missouri Botanical Gardens, organized at the Gardens in 1998. Having become intrigued by the concept of ecosystem services, which at the time was still relatively new even within ecological economics, the three of us eagerly attended and immediately noticed that, besides J. B., only one other lawyer was present in the audience of more than a hundred. The room was filled with ecologists, economists, and representatives from other social and physical sciences, but the contingent from.
