A UK Millennium Assessment
120. The former director of the MA, Walter Reid,
told us that, rather than conducting another global MA (which
would be better in 3-4 years), the focus should now be on "efforts
to catalyze national, regional, and local assessments around the
world".[122] He
thought that it would be "extremely valuable" for the
UK to undertake a national assessment, as "what is needed
is the application of the general MA approach at national (or
even sub-national) levels since these are the scales where decisions
influencing ecosystems are actually made. Once there is more experience
with the utility at these scales then the case will be stronger
for periodic global assessments of this nature".[123]
Other witnesses agreed that a UK assessment would be useful, particularly
for validating the MA methodologies as the UK is unique globally
in terms of the quality of data available.[124]
121. Dr Osborn from NERC felt that much of the work
required to undertake a UK assessment had already been done and
that future information such as the Countryside Survey would add
to this over the next couple of years. He felt that "there
are some very promising ways in which we could do an MA but it
is probably more for departments to decide whether they want to
have that type of information available in the round or whether
they want to make progress on specific ecosystems and make more
rapid progress across a narrower front".[125]
Dr Osborn stated that he does see the value in bringing together
information in this way to form an MA-type assessment.[126]
122. The JNCC, however, called instead for an assessment
of the MA from a UK perspective rather than a full MA. It stressed
that as the MA did not undertake more local assessments, other
than the use of individual research projects to stress certain
points, it is difficult for MA findings to be effectively used
at more local scales "without further work to assess the
relevance or appropriateness of its findings at this scale".[127]
It therefore recommended that work already conducted by the Global
Environmental Change Committee's Global Biodiversity Sub-Committee
(GBSC) to appraise the MA from a UK perspective should be continued:
This is an essential step in trying to integrate
the findings of the MA into UK policies and practices. It should
not be a laborious and time-consuming replication of the MA process
for the UK, but rather a consideration of the MA to identify the
key issues for the UK. The recommendations made by the GBSC usefully
outline the work necessary to undertake this type of UK assessment
report.[128]
123. Neville Ash from UNEP-WCMC told us that he believes
that the research DEFRA is already conducting is, essentially,
an MA-type assessment for England. He said that this was because
"of the activities underway in terms of looking at data availability
for ecosystem services, looking at trends of ecosystem services,
looking at the evaluation of ecosystem services through time,
and doing that at an England scale, and in this case four sub-England
scales".[129]
He recognised that there are some key differences between DEFRA's
research and what might be considered a full assessment, such
as a lack of the development of scenarios and responses and the
participation of stakeholders, but argued that many sub-global
assessments were similar to DEFRA's research. He concluded by
saying that "in terms of the on-going follow-up and co-ordination
and sharing of lessons learnt within a sub-global assessment within
UNEP, we are seeing this England and sub-England assessment very
much as one of the sub-global activities of the MA".[130]
124. The Minister, Barry Gardiner MP, told us that
he does not consider the DEFRA research to be an MA assessment,
specifically due to the lack of inclusion of scenarios. He did
argue however that "it is a comprehensive assessment and
it will advise on how we could achieve a full national assessment
if that is the road that we then want to go down if we think that
is the best thing that we could do at that stage".[131]
He stressed that the research being conducted is "working
to develop a strategic approach to conservation and enhancement
of the environment and that will include the development of a
framework for looking at whole ecosystems that draws on the whole
approach of the MA".[132]
He argued that it is the Government's obligation now "to
try and see how we can use the research that has been done through
the MA to inform policy making and to inform decision making [
]
within DEFRA".[133]
He also stressed that this obligation extended to the development
of "tools that will help other Government departments make
better policy decisions on the back of that ecosystem services
approach and having a metric that enables them to do that".[134]
The Minister did not rule out a full MA assessment for the UK
in the future, accepting that it may enable better identification
of effective policy responses. He stressed that the Government
is trying to integrate the MA's findings in a "systematic
way".[135]
125. We accept the Minister's point that integration
of the MA findings must be undertaken in a systematic and coordinated
manner and therefore we call for a Ministerial group to be established
to oversee this process. This group must undertake to assess and
evaluate the MA from a UK perspective, and coordinate the various
stands of research that are being conducted and planned. Ultimately
the Government should conduct a full MA-type assessment for the
UK to enable the identification and development of effective policy
responses to ecosystem service degradation.
79