Select Committee on Environmental Audit First Report


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   ibid Back


 
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