Environment and governance must be used as screens and points of orientation for all the other Goals, not just MDG-7. The MDGs are designed to be a collection of interdependent goals that must be pursued in concert with one another. Integrated strategies featuring interventions that advance multiple goals and targets simultaneously will have faster, deeper, more cost-effective, and more lasting impact on human well-being than sequential measures addressing individual goals in isolation. However, all too often, governments operate as if the goals were separate, independent entities, resulting in little coordination or cooperation between various ministries and agencies whose actions bear importantly on the likelihood of reaching MDG targets by 2015.

To be effective, MDG-7 on ensuring environmental sustainability must prompt us to raise questions about how strategies and activities under each of the other goals affect the environment and the long-term capacity of ecosystems to provide the fundamental services required for human survival and well-being. Governments and institutions that fail to recognize this reality and act upon it are at high risk that the investments and reforms they advocate for reaching one goal are likely to undermine efforts to reach another goal. Nowhere is this more true than in the case of the environmental assets of the poor and the potential for environmental income to contribute to poverty reduction.

An integrated approach to meeting the MDG targets should be focused on improved management of ecosystems and their capacity to sustainably deliver multiple types of ecosystem services (MA 2005b:19.2). A goal-by-goal analysis of the implications of ecosystem conditions for achieving the 2015 MDG targets indicates that most of them depend directly on ecosystem services, including the targets on poverty, hunger, gender equality, child mortality, disease, and sustainable development. Moreover, multiple MDGs depend on the same ecosystem services (MA 2005b:19.4-5).

To reach all the MDGs simultaneously, it is crucially important to look carefully across the board at the required investments in ecosystem services (that is, the continued capacity of ecosystems to provide provisioning, supporting, and regulating services) and the necessary governance reforms and institutional capacity-building. For instance, interventions to reach MDG Target 1 on eradicating extreme poverty must fully explore and integrate the role that ecosystems and their services can play in improving livelihoods. Similarly, efforts to reach MDG Target 2 on ending hunger need to be based on an ecosystem- focused analysis of how to most effectively maintain and improve soil fertility, water quality and supply, plant genetic resources, watershed management, and so forth.

To date, however, such assessments have rarely been undertaken in national and international planning for the MDGs. The IMF and World Bank have proposed a five-point agenda for accelerating progress toward the MDGs from which improved environmental management is conspicuously absent (IMF and World Bank 2005:3) Since this agenda was developed with particular reference to Sub-Saharan Africa—where ecosystem degradation is a principal constraint to lasting poverty reduction— the omission seems all the more glaring.

Investments in ecosystem services can produce synergistic effects across several targets: for instance, investments in watershed protection can provide multiple benefits in terms of safe drinking water, reduction of waterborne diseases, and flood protection (MA 2005b:19.39). Improved energy services will be a necessary input for reaching most of the MDGs, and a switch to modern, clean fuels and improved cookstove technology will produce multiple dividends related to improved indoor air quality, better child and maternal health, empowerment of women, and environmental sustainability (MA 2005b:19.40-41).

At the same time, some tradeoffs will be necessary, and it is vital to weigh these with reference to environmental and governance considerations. Although the UN Millennium Project is notable for devoting considerable attention to the role of environmental management in meeting the MDGs, its recommendations for reaching the 2015 targets stop short of fully integrating ecosystems as a cross-cutting orientation. For instance, rapid scale-up of MDG-based investments is a focal point for these recommendations, but they contain no discussion of the need to consider trade-offs in critical areas such as infrastructure development (UN Millennium Project 2005:31-35).

One constraint to a cross-cutting, ecosystems-based approach to reaching the MDGs is the inadequacy of environmental monitoring systems in many parts of the developing world. Documenting and assessing progress toward the 2015 targets and the sustainability of critical ecosystem functioning may require strengthening of monitoring systems for soil fertility, hydrological services (water filtration, aquifer recharging, flood prevention), maintenance of biodiversity, climate regulation, and other key ecosystem services (MA 2005b:19.3). Indicators should reflect how local people value ecosystems, including for food, medicines, cultural purposes, and other uses. Most importantly, indicators need to better capture the impact of extracting a particular bundle of services from an ecosystem on its resilience and capacity to provide future services. Investments in measuring, monitoring, and mapping poverty and ecosystem services will give policymakers at local and national levels access to indicators reflecting the linkages between poverty and the environment, which can be used to shape pro-poor growth strategies.

The slow progress that countries and institutions have made on integrating sustainability into their operations is an indication not of an idea whose time has passed, but rather of the deep structural changes that it requires. In the context of the MDGs, this means that rich countries and international institutions need to lead by example. New and increased long-term financing mechanisms are needed to strengthen environmental capacities and support integrated, ecosystem-based implementation of the MDGs in developing countries. Countries will likely see faster progress on targets aimed at areas such as hunger, water, and sanitation that respond more directly to increased financial and technical inputs (Clemens et al. 2004:26). The experiences gained in these areas of quick response will be an important foundation for longer-term efforts to design and implement national sustainable development strategies.