The MA highlights the relationship between the poor and ecosystem goods and services. While everyone is affected by ecosystem degradation, the poor suffer the harmful effects disproportionately. In fact, the disparities between the poor and rich have grown in recent decades. For instance, despite global increases in the amount of food available per capita, over 800 million people remain undernourished, and food production per capita has actually decreased in Sub-Saharan Africa. While water availability has increased in many regions of the world, half of the urban population in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean suffer from contaminated water and its burden of disease. Ecosystem degradation has very real human and financial costs. The burning of 10 million hectares of Indonesia's forests in 1997-8 resulted in additional health care costs of US$9.3 billion and affected some 20 million people (MA 2005a:2, 13, 51, 57, 62).

The poor have also suffered from loss of access to ecosystems through privatization of what were formerly common pool resources. Examples include inland and coastal fisheries, which the MA findings reveal to be in steep decline. Smallscale fisheries are of great value to the poor, providing an inexpensive source of protein and supplemental income. Increasingly, coastal areas that were once open fishing grounds are being converted for use in shrimp farming and other forms of aquaculture. The harvest from aquaculture ponds or cages is typically exported, and both the income and the protein bypass the local poor. Countries where extensive conversion of coastal habitats for aquaculture is taking place include Ecuador, Thailand, Vietnam, Honduras, Chile, Indonesia, the Philippines, Bangladesh, and India (MA 2005b:25.13).

The MA findings also confirm that the substantial degradation of ecosystems that is now occurring is a barrier to achieving the Millennium Development Goals. For example, the MA warns that meeting the goals of eradicating hunger and reducing child mortality by 2015 will be unattainable if ecosystems continue to be used unsustainably. Soil degradation and water scarcity are two important sources of risk to the production of agroecosystems, and thus to the food supply, particularly as it affects the poor. The MA makes it clear that failure to tackle the current decline of ecosystem health will seriously erode efforts to reduce rural poverty (MA 2005a:61)

For more information on the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment and its findings, see: http://www.maweb.org/.