In recent years, scientists have begun to focus on the idea that healthy, functioning ecosystems provide essential services to human populations, ranging from water purification to climate regulation. Nature and the Marketplace examines the real prospects for nature"s marketable services to "turn profits" at levels that exceed the profits expected from alternative, ecologically destructive, business activities. As an accessible but rigorous introduction to market-based conservation, Nature and the Marketplace will be essential reading for professionals, students, and scholars in conservation biology, ecology, environmental economics, environmental policy, and related fields. Geoffrey Heal is Paul Garrett Professor of Public Policy and Corporate Responsibility at the Columbia University Graduate School of Business in New York and coauthor of Economic Theory and Exhaustible Resources (Cambridge, 1980).