Millennium Ecosystem Assessment
The MA is the most comprehensive survey of the ecological state of the planet. It concludes that the way society has caused irreversible changes that are degrading the ecological processes that support life on Earth. Some findings:
- 60% of world ecosystem services have been degraded
- Of 24 evaluated ecosystems, 15 are being damaged
- About a quarter of the Earth's land surface is now cultivated.
- People now use between 40 percent and 50 percent of all available freshwater running off the land. Water withdrawals has doubled over the past 40 years.
- Over a quarter of all fish stocks are overharvested.
- Since 1980, about 35 percent of mangroves have been lost
- About 20% of corals were lost in just 20 years; 20% degraded
- Nutrient pollution has led to eutrophication of waters and coastal dead zones
- Species extinction rates are now 100-1,000 times above the background rate
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Some recommendations
- Remove subsidies to agriculture, fisheries and energy sources that harm the environment.
- Encourage landowners to manage property in ways that enhance the supply of ecosystem services, such as carbon storage, and the generation of fresh water.
- Protect more areas from development, especially in the oceans.
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Spinoff projects
There is a related data portal, intended to be an interactive portal for the public, being launched jointly by the World Data Center for Biodiversity and Ecology (WDCBE), the United Nations Environment Programme, the Center for International Earth Science Information Network, UNEP's World Conservation Monitoring Centre, and the National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII), currently hosted on an NBII server. It aims to provide easy access to reports, maps and data collected during the course of the MA research. The United Nations is working to prevent further environmental decline through the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2005-2014).
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References
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This article or section includes a list of references or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks in-text citations. You can improve this article by introducing more precise citations. |
- Giles, J. (2005, March 31). Millennium group nails down the financial value of ecosystems. In Nature, 434, 547.
- Habitat for humanity. (2005, April 2). In The Economist, 375, 75.
- Mooney, H. & Cropper, A. & Reid, W. (2005, March 31). Confronting the human dilemma: How can ecosystems provide sustainable services to benefit society?. In Nature, 434, 561.
- Ranganathan, J & Irwin, F. (2007, May 7). Restoring Nature's Capital: An Action Agenda to Sustain Ecosystem Services [1].
- Reid WV (2004) Bridging the Science–Policy Divide. PLoS Biol 2(2): e27.
- Revkin, A. C. (2005, April 5). Report tallies hidden costs of human assault on nature. In The New York times, CLIV, D2.
- Stokstad, E. (2005, April 1). Taking the pulse of Earth's life-support systems. In Science, 308, 41 – 43.
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External links
- Official MA site (information-rich)
- Official popularized versions of MA reports: ecosystem change, biodiversity, desertification
- Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Toolkit (March 2007) by Island Press - describes the MA, ecosystem services, and valuation, and lays out lessons learned from effective policies and practices to increase human well-being and to solve environmental and development problems.
- Wikinews report on the four year study's initial results
- United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2005-2014)
- Millennium Ecosystem Assessment press release signed by eight of the world's leading environmental conservation organizations
- Amazonia Landscape Mapping and Biodiversity Estimation
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