WRI Publications Feed: Post Millennium Ecosystem Assessment: From Assessment to Action (MA)

Restoring Nature's Capital: An Action Agenda to Sustain Ecosystem Services - Restaurando El Capital Natural

admin — Tue, 01 May 2007 00:00:00 -0400

Reflecting and Building on the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment

Nature provides the conditions for a healthy, secure, and fulfilling existence. Among the many benefits people receive from nature are fresh water, food, protection from floods, and spiritual enrichment. It is hard to think of a development or investment decision that doesn’t in some way depend upon and affect nature.

Integrating findings at the local, regional, global scales and from alternative intellectual traditions, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment presents a stark account of the mismanagement of these services. Of the 24 ecosystems assessed, only four have shown improvement over the past 50 years. A startling 15 are in serious decline. Five hang in the balance. But we don’t have to continue down this path.

Using the Assessment as its backdrop, Restoring Nature’s Capital proposes an action agenda for business, governments, and civil society to reverse ecosystem degradation.

Drawing on the recommendations of 17 contributing authors, WRI’s own series of World Resources reports, and the good work of many others, it sets out to answer the thorny question of what changes must be made to ensure that ecosystems can meet the needs of today’s and future generations.

The authors contend that governance—who makes decisions, how they are made, and with what information—is at the heart of sustaining healthy ecosystems. With this as their fundamental tenet, the authors present an action agenda for reversing degradation of ecosystems and sustaining their capacity to provide vital services for generations to come. The action agenda identifies how decisions about development projects and investments can be made in ways that lead to healthy ecosystem services. These decisions, made by local and national governments, corporations, and international financial institutions, involve billions of dollars, affect huge swaths of land and water, and affect millions of people.

Millennium Ecosystem Assessment: Ecosystems and Human Well-being -- Synthesis

admin — Tue, 01 Mar 2005 00:00:00 -0500

The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Synthesis Report boils down the findings of the four working groups into a simple, straightforward description of Earth’s ecological health and its linkages to human well-being. It answers a series of key questions, such as

How have ecosystems changed over the past 50 years?
What are the most critical factors causing ecosystem damage?
What options do we have for better conserving, restoring, and benefiting from ecosystems?

The volume then presents a snapshot of the health and prospects for each of the main services that ecosystems provide, including the provision of food, water, timber, fuel, climate regulation, disease prevention, and others. The Synthesis Report will prove ideal for students and laypersons interested in a quick, but nuanced, understanding of the state of Earth’s ecosystems.

The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment’s work is overseen by a 45-member Board of Directors, co-chaired by Robert Watson, Chief Scientist and Senior Advisor for the Environment of the Environmentally and Socially Sustainable Development Network of the World Bank, and A.H. Zakri, director of the United Nations University’s Institute of Advanced Studies. The Assessment Panel, which oversees the technical work of the MA, includes 13 of the world’s leading social and natural scientists. It is co-chaired by Angela Cropper of the Cropper Foundation and Harold Mooney of Stanford University. Walter Reid is the director of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment.

Millennium Ecosystem Assessment

“Only by understanding the environment and how it works, can we make the necessary decisions to protect it. Only by valuing all our precious natural and human resources can we hope to build a sustainable future. The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment is an unprecedented contribution to our global mission for development, sustainability and peace.” -Kofi Annan, Secretary-General of the United Nations

Launched in June 2001 and involving more than 1,300 leading scientists from 95 nations, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) is a ground-breaking study on how humans have altered ecosystems, and how changes in ecosystem services affect human well-being, both now and in the future. Integrating findings at the local, regional, global scales and from alternative intellectual traditions, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment offers the first truly comprehensive picture of the health of the planet.

The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment books provide an an indispensable baseline of information for researchers, scholars, and students, as well as inform public decision-making for decades to come.

Millennium Ecosystem Assessment: Living Beyond Our Means -- Natural Assets and Human Well Being (Statement from the Board)

admin — Tue, 01 Mar 2005 00:00:00 -0500

This statement was developed by the Board governing the MA process, whose membership includes representatives from U.N. organizations, governments through a number of international conventions, nongovernmental organizations, academia, business, and indigenous peoples.

The statement from the Board identifies 10 key messages and conclusions that can be drawn from the assessment:

Everyone in the world depends on nature and ecosystem services to provide the conditions for a decent, healthy, and secure life.
Humans have made unprecedented changes to ecosystems in recent decades to meet growing demands for food, fresh water, fiber, and energy.
These changes have helped to improve the lives of billions, but at the same time they weakened nature’s ability to deliver other key services such as purification of air and water, protection from disasters, and the provision of medicines.
Among the outstanding problems identified by this assessment are the dire state of many of the world’s fish stocks; the intense vulnerability of the 2 billion people living in dry regions to the loss of ecosystem services, including water supply; and the growing threat to ecosystems from climate change and nutrient pollution.
Human activities have taken the planet to the edge of a massive wave of species extinctions, further threatening our own well-being.
The loss of services derived from ecosystems is a significant barrier to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals to reduce poverty, hunger, and disease.
The pressures on ecosystems will increase globally in coming decades unless human attitudes and actions change.
Measures to conserve natural resources are more likely to succeed if local communities are given ownership of them, share the benefits, and are involved in decisions.
Even today’s technology and knowledge can reduce considerably the human impact on ecosystems. They are unlikely to be deployed fully, however, until ecosystem services cease to be perceived as free and limitless, and their full value is taken into account.
Better protection of natural assets will require coordinated efforts across all sections of governments, businesses, and international institutions. The productivity of ecosystems depends on policy choices on investment, trade, subsidy, taxation, and regulation, among others.

Errata

In the pre-print draft of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Board Statement on on page 8, line 2 and page 11, line 11, the sentence: “Since 1945, more land such as forest, savanna, and natural grassland has been converted for the growing of crops than in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries combined” should read: “Between 1950 and 1980, more land such as forest, savanna, and natural grassland has been converted for the growing of crops than in the eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth centuries combined.”

Authors and Acknowledgments

The Board of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment represents the users and audiences for the findings of the MA and helps to ensure that the MA will produce information and build capacity needed by the users of the Assessment at local, national, regional, and global scales. The Board also appoints the Director and the chairs of the Assessment Panel and Working Groups, approves the budget and workplan, selects the institutions that will provide administrative support, and will ultimately receive and approve the findings of the Assessment. The Board is comprised of individuals representing specific institutions such as the Convention on Biological Diversity, and other individuals selected in their personal capacity as representatives of government, scientific communities, the private sector and NGOs. The Board met for the first time in July 2000 in Trondheim, Norway and met annually during the course of the Assessment.

Board Co-Chairs

A.H. Zakri, Director, Institute of Advanced Studies, United Nations University
Robert Watson, Chief Scientist and Senior Advisor ESSD, World Bank

Institutional Representatives

Salvatore Arico, Programme Officer, Division of Ecological Science, UNESCO
Peter Bridgewater, Secretary General, Ramsar Convention on Wetlands
Hama Arba Diallo, Executive Secretary, UNCCD
Adel El-Beltagy, Director General, International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas, CGIAR
C. Max Finlayson, Chair, Science and Technical Review Panel, Ramsar Convention on Wetlands
Colin Galbraith, Chair, Scientific Council, CMS
Erica Harms, Senior Program Officer for Biodiversity, United Nations Foundation
Robert Hepworth, Acting Executive Secretary, CMS
Olav Kjørven, Director, Sustainable Energy and Environment Division, UNDP
Kerstin Leitner, Assistant Director-General, Sustainable Development and Healthy Environments, WHO
Alfred Oteng-Yeboah, SBSTTA Chair (outgoing), CBD
Christian Prip, SBSTTA Chair (incoming), CBD
Mario Ramos, Biodiversity Program Manager, Global Environment Facility
Thomas Rosswall, Director, International Council for Science - ICSU
Achim Steiner, Director General, IUCN-World Conservation Union
Halldor Thorgeirsson, Coordinator, Methods, Inventories and Science Program, UNFCCC
Klaus Töpfer, Executive Director, UNEP
Jeff Tschirley, Chief, Environmental Service, Research, and Training Division, FAO
Riccardo Valentini, Chair, Committee on Science and Technology, UNCCD
Hamdallah Zedan, Executive Secretary, CBD

Members At-Large

Fernando Almeida, Executive President, Business Council for Sustainable Development, Brazil
Phoebe Barnard, Global Invasive Species Programme, National Botanical Institute, South Africa
Gordana Beltram, Undersecretary, Ministry of Environment and Spatial Planning, Slovenia
Delmar Blasco, Former Secretary General, Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, Spain
Antony Burgmans, Chairman, Unilever N.V., The Netherlands
Esther Camac, Asociación Ixä Ca Vaá de Desarrollo e Información Indigena, Costa Rica
Angela Cropper, President, The Cropper Foundation, Trinidad & Tobago
Partha Dasgupta, Professor, Faculty of Economics and Politics, University of Cambridge, UK
José María Figueres, Managing Director, Center for Global Agenda, World Economic Forum, Switzerland
Fred Fortier, Indigenous Peoples\’ Biodiversity Information Network, Canada
Mohammed Hassan, Executive Director, Third World Academy of Sciences, Italy
Jonathan Lash, President, World Resources Institute, USA
Wangari Maathai, Vice Minister for Environment, Kenya
Paul Maro, Professor, Department of Geography, University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
Harold Mooney, Professor, Department of Biological Sciences, Stanford University, USA
Marina Motovilova, Professor, Faculty of Geography, M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russia
M.K. Prasad, Environment Centre of the Kerala Sastra Sahitya Parishad, India
Walter V. Reid, Director, Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (ex officio), Malaysia and USA
Henry Schacht, Past Chairman of the Board, Lucent Technologies, USA
Peter Johan Schei, Director, Fridtjof Nansen Institute, Norway
Ismail Serageldin, President, Bibliotheca Alexandrina, Egypt
David Suzuki, Chair, David Suzuki Foundation, Canada
M.S. Swaminathan, Chairman MS Swaminathan Research Foundation, India
José Galízia Tundisi, President, International Institute of Ecology, Brazil
Axel Wenblad, Vice President Environmental Affairs, Skanska AB, Sweden
Xu Guanhua, Minister, Ministry of Science and Technology, China
Muhammad Yunus, Managing Director, Grameen Bank, Bangladesh

Millennium Ecosystem Assessment: Ecosystems and Human Well-being -- A framework for assessment

admin — Mon, 01 Sep 2003 00:00:00 -0400

Ecosystems and Human Well-Being is the first product of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, a four-year international work program designed to meet the needs of decision-makers for scientific information on the links between ecosystem change and human well-being. The book offers an overview of the project, describing the conceptual framework that is being used, defining its scope, and providing a baseline of understanding that all participants need to move forward.

The Millennium Assessment focuses on how humans have altered ecosystems, and how changes in ecosystem services have affected human well-being, how ecosystem changes may affect people in future decades, and what types of responses can be adopted at local, national, or global scales to improve ecosystem management and thereby contribute to human well-being and poverty alleviation. The program was launched by United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan in June 2001, and the primary assessment reports will be released by Island Press in 2005.

Leading scientists from more than 100 nations are conducting the assessment, which can aid countries, regions, or companies by:

providing a clear, scientific picture of the current state of Earth’s ecosystems at multiple scales
deepening our understanding of the relationship and linkages between ecosystems and human well-being, including economic, social and cultural aspirations
demonstrating the potential of ecosystems to contribute to poverty reduction and enhanced well-being
offering scenarios of our future human and ecological well-being
identifying and evaluating policy and management options for sustaining ecosystem services and harmonizing them with human needs

The Millennium Assessment is an invaluable new resource for professionals and policy-makers concerned with international development, environmental science, environmental policy, and related fields. It will help both in choosing among existing options and in identifying new approaches for achieving integrated management of land, water, and living resources while strengthening regional, national, and local capacities. It will also improve policy and decision-making at all levels through improved collaboration between natural and social scientists, and between scientists and policy-makers. Ecosystems and Human Well-Being is an essential introduction to the project.