UN Millennium Ecosystem Assessment
4. The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) was launched
by United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan in 2001, with its
global assessment completed in March 2005. The MA is an international
work plan designed to provide decision makers and the public with
scientific information about the consequences of ecosystem change
for human well-being. It focuses on the benefits that people obtain
from ecosystems, known as ecosystem services, such as food, timber,
flood protection and biodiversity. It sought to identify how changes
to ecosystem services have affected human well-being in the past,
how changes might affect people in the future and what might we
do at local, national and global scales to improve ecosystem management
in order to promote human well-being and poverty alleviation.[1]
5. Governed by a multi-stakeholder board drawn from
the world of science, civil society, government and the private
sector, the MA used a team of over 1,300 authors from 95 countries
to produce a global assessment. It brought together information
from a range of sources including scientific literature, the private
sector and indigenous peoples. The MA was 'multi-scale', consisting
of interlinked assessments undertaken at local, watershed and
regional scales, which fed into the global assessment. These sub-global
assessments were "designed to meet the needs of decision-makers
at the scale at which they are undertaken, strengthen the global
findings with on-the-ground reality, and strengthen the local
findings with global perspectives, data and models".[2]
There are 18 MA-approved sub-global assessments with an additional
15 of associated status.
6. The global assessment report was published in
five volumes, one being a summary for decision makers. These were
followed by one over-aching synthesis report and five other synthesis
reports tailored to specific audiences covering subjects including
biodiversity and business.
1 "About the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment",
Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 6 November 2006, www.millenniumassessment.org Back
2
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