Namibia faces the problem of bush encroachment, a process in which woody plant species become the dominant component of an area’s vegetation. It is assumed that 30% of the country’s farmland is affected. As a result, the carrying capacity of the land is reduced, threatening the livelihoods of farmers. The issue of bush encroachment can also be understood through the concept of ecosystem services. Ecosystem services play a central role to human wellbeing and economic progress, as they represent the benefits society derives from the functioning of ecosystem services. In the Namibian context, the relevant ecosystem services include: groundwater recharge; carbon sequestration; recreational and tourism services; biodiversity; and soil conservation. Ecosystem services are often undervalued in economic terms, resulting ultimately in their underprovision. A solution to this problem is offered by the concept of payment for ecosystem services (PES), where those benefitting from a particular service provide financial or other incentives to the individuals or entities providing that service. For instance, a landowner practising sustainable forest management to maintain watershed services might receive payments from downstream users, such as water utility companies. PES schemes can be categorised into different mechanisms: i) payments for implementing sustainable practices, often funded publicly; ii) voluntary markets where ecosystem services are commoditised and can be purchased by private or public entities; and iii) user charges and compliance markets. Namibia’s constrained financial resources make it challenging to implement publicly financed PES mechanisms in the short term. A user-charge approach, based on compliance obligations, is also difficult, due to the unclear identification of all beneficiaries of ecosystem services from sustainable bush management. However, a promising alternative lies in adopting a voluntary market-based approach, which could offer a cost-effective solution for the Namibian state. Among the ways to commodify the ecosystem services in market-based approaches are carbon credits and biodiversity credits. On one hand, there are carbon credits, which can be divided into two broad categories: avoidance credits and removal credits. An avoidance credit, generated by projects that prevent GHG emissions that otherwise would have taken place, represents 1 tonne of CO2e whose release into the atmosphere has been avoided. A removal credit represents 1 tonne of CO2e that has been removed from the atmosphere. On the other hand are biodiversity credits, which involve payments for the protection, restoration or management of biodiversity. While the market for carbon credits is well established, biodiversity credits have only slowly been gaining traction, and it is unlikely that they can be commercialised at a scale comparable to carbon credits in the near future.