Yet the challenges are often seen in technical and managerial terms, as a matter of getting the technologies, prices and regulations right, rather than in terms of the more profound restructuring of social, economic and political systems and power imbalances that would be required to transform unsustainable patterns. How the challenges are addressed has profound implications for who gains and who loses, among social groups and local, national and global interests. Market-based instruments that attempt to redress or prevent environmental degradation and mitigate climate change by valuing and putting a price on nature can risk exacerbating the very problems they were designed to solve.