Transcript Slide 1

The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment:
Connecting ecosystems and their services with
environmental and social security.
Prof. Dr. Rik Leemans
Co-Chair Responses Working Group
&
Environmental Systems Analysis Group
Wageningen University
Millennium Ecosystem Assessment
An international scientific assessment of the consequences of
ecosystem changes for human well-being:
 Modeled on the IPCC
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Providing information requested by:

Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)

Convention to Combat Desertification (CCD)
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Ramsar Convention on Wetlands

Convention on Migratory Species (CMS)

other partners including the private sector and civil society
With the goals of:

stimulating and guiding action to conserve ecosystems and
enhance their contribution to human well-being

building capacity to undertake integrated ecosystem assessments
and to act on their information
Human Challenge
Considerable progress has been made in fighting poverty
 life expectancy increasing
 infant mortality decreasing
 agricultural production increasing, etc.
Major problems remain
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1.2 billion people live on less than $1 per day
1 billion people do not have access to clean water
More than 2 billion people have no access to sanitation
1.3 billion are breathing air below the standards considered
acceptable by WHO
 700 million people suffer from indoor air pollution due to biomass
burning
Source: Serageldin, 2002, Science 296:54
Millennium Ecosystem Assessment
Why a Multi-Scale Assessment?
Expect that findings at any scale of a multi-scale assessment will
be improved by information and perspectives from other scales
Rationale


Global Assessment
Characteristic scale of processes
Regional
Regional
Development
Banks, etc.
National
National
Government
Local
Local
Community
Greater resolution at smaller
scales

Independent validation of
conclusions

Response options matched to
the scale where decision-making
takes place
Users
First MA Product:
Conceptual Framework
Ecosystem Services:
The benefits people obtain from ecosystems
Provisioning
Regulating
Cultural
Goods produced or
provided by ecosystems
Benefits obtained from
regulation of ecosystem
processes
Non-material benefits
obtained from
ecosystems
• spiritual
• recreational
• aesthetic
• inspirational
• educational
• communal
• symbolic
• food
• fresh water
• fuel wood
• fiber
• biochemicals
• genetic resources
• climate regulation
• disease regulation
• flood regulation
• detoxification
Supporting
Services necessary for production of other ecosystem services.
• Soil formation
• Nutrient cycling
• Primary production
Ecosystem changes affect human well-being
Security is affected both by changes in provisioning services, which
affect supplies of food and other goods and the likelihood of conflict
over declining resources, and by changes in regulating services,
which could influence the frequency and magnitude of floods,
droughts or other catastrophes. It can also be affected by changes
in cultural services as, for example, when their loss contributes to
the weakening of social relations in a community.
These changes in turn affect material well-being, health, freedom and
choice and good social relations.
Human well-being can be enhanced through sustainable human
interactions with ecosystems supported by necessary instruments,
institutions, organizations, and technology. Creation of these
through participation and transparency may contribute to freedoms
and choice as well as to increased economic, social, and ecological
security. By ecological security, we mean the minimum level of
ecological stock needed to ensure a sustainable flow of
ecosystem services.
Major issues related to security
Food and water insecurity is a second primary area of
concern in changes in ecosystems services. Multiple
domains of vulnerability exist in food security regimes and
livelihood systems. Production, economic exchanges, and
nutrition are key elements as well as more structural issues
associated with the political economy.
Examples:
 Desertification in China (sand storms)
 Eutrofication in western coastal ecosystems
 Long-term droughts and rainfall variability in the Sahel
 Crop failures in rural Africa
Framework Examines Multiple Drivers as they
Influence Ecosystems and Human Well-being
Driver
Response
Human
Impact
Climate Land Cover Biodiversity Nutrient
Change Change
Loss
Loading
Climate Change
Energy
Food
Biodiversity
Sector
Supply
Health
Economics
IPCC
Water
Social
Ecosystems
Health
Economics
Social
Millennium Assessment
Etc.
Framework allows examination of trade-offs
among services
Water availability
Food supply and
demand
Freshwater supply and
demand
Water use and nutrient loss
Erosion and
water flow
Forest product supply
and demand
Climate
change
Biodiversity
loss
Source: Ayensu et al. 1999. Science 286:685-686.
Conceptual Framework
Conceptual Framework
Conceptual Framework
Conceptual Framework
Conceptual Framework
Conceptual Framework
Preliminary findings of the C&T WG
 At
a global level there have been substantial
improvements in human wellbeing since the 1950s.
World population has almost tripled, but the ability to support that
population expanded even more. Life expectancy increased and infant
mortality rates declined almost everywhere.
 More
important, however, has been the enormous
expansion in human capital. Literacy rates are a proxy for the
number of people with at least primary education. Literacy has
increased everywhere. Secondary and tertiary education rates have
also expanded greatly.
 The
growth in human well-being over the last several
decades has come in large part because of increases
in provisioning services from several major
ecosystems. Over the last few decades, these changes have
been the largest in cultivated systems, with the biggest changes in
this time period coming from increased intensification rather than from
large-scale conversion of land to agriculture, and coastal and marine
systems, from harvesting fish resources and the addition of nutrients
in coastal regions as pollutants.
Preliminary findings of the C&T WG
Nutrient cycling is one of the services that has been profoundly affected
by human activities over long periods of time, with a significant
acceleration in the last few decades. Most of the impact on nutrient cycling has
come from the large-scale agricultural changes and its inputs over the last decades.
Therefore, most of the tradeoff of increased production against other non-provisioning
services, such as nutrient cycling, can be tracked by focusing on areas where agriculture
has changed substantially. In the same vein, biodiversity is critical to the performance of
all the buffering mechanisms that ensure an efficient use and cycling of nutrients.
Ecosystem changes due to trade-offs for enhancing provisioning
services have played an important role in the emergence or resurgence
of infectious diseases. Ecological processes have included: niche invasion,
biodiversity loss or animal species extinction, habitat degradation, loss of predator species,
or alteration or replacement of animal host population densities.
It is well established that losses in biodiversity are occurring globally at
all levels, from ecosystems through species, populations and genes. The
current rate of species extinction is higher than at any time in the last 65 million years, and
there is an increasing trend for conversion of naturally occurring, species-rich ecosystems
into more intensively managed habitats, with reduced biodiversity. The extent of loss of
genetic diversity is less well understood, although recorded losses in agricultural genetic
diversity are widespread.
Scenario Working Group
What are the consequences for ecosystem services and
human well-being of alternative worlds in which
different approaches to sustainability are emphasized?
Scenario Name
Dominant Approach for Sustainability
Order from Strength
Reserves, parks, national-level policies
Global Orchestration
Economic growth, public goods
Adapting Mosaic
Local-regional governance, common-property
institutions
TechnoGarden
Green technology
Scenarios W.G. 29 Apr 04
Security status in the MA scenarios
Global Orchestration
TechnoGarden
Region
Adapting Mosaic
Order from Strength
World
Up
Down
Up
Down
OECD
Up
Up
Up
No change
FSU
No change
Up
No change
Down
MENA
Down
UP
Down
Down
SSA
Down
Up
Down
Down
LA
Down
UP
No change
Down
Asia
Down
Up
No
change
Scenarios:
preliminary findings
Diversity (vascular plants) declines in all scenarios
(most in Order from Strength, least in TechnoGarden and
Adapting Mosaic). Greatest losses in warm mixed forest,
savanna, scrub, tropical forest & woodland.
Fish populations are lost due to declining water availability.
Differences among scenarios are minor. Most losses of
fishes occur in poor tropical and subtropical countries.
Our ability to reduce the rate of loss of species’
populations by 2010 is in doubt. Two scenarios (Order
from Strength and Global Orchestration) fail to meet the
target. The other two may, at best, barely meet the target.
Preliminary findings of the RWG
A misleading dichotomous approach to nature-culture
relations is common in policy debates. Certain cultural perceptions
of landscapes become dominant or imposed through economic and political
forces, often to the detriment of local praxis. Scientific knowledge and the
misreading of local praxis has served to justify certain forms of development,
resource use, and local institutional changes, leading to high levels of
environmental degradation, poverty and food insecurity. Understanding the
complexities of different cultural perceptions of landscapes, management of
resources and local institutional arrangements contributes to alternative
strategies to ecosystem management and socio-economic development. Local
communities do not operate in a vacuum, they create multi-level alliances, adopt
and adapt global influences to foster their own livelihoods.
To understand the potential impacts on HWB of ecosystem
change, two aspects need to be considered: the current
vulnerability of the population affected and their future
adaptive capacity. These two considerations are closely related, since
vulnerable populations are less able to plan and implement adaptive responses.
Preliminary findings of the RWG
Targeted and sequenced intervention strategies were
found be more successful than general sectoral or
macro level policies.
Targeted policies were found to appreciate the heterogeneity of stakeholders
and the different type of relationship they have with ecosystem services. Joint
forest management systems can be considered as a combination of legal,
social, behavioral and cognitive interventions that has worked relatively well in
bringing about sustainable management of forest ecosystems, conserving
biodiversity and improving human wellbeing by providing security, improving
social relations, basic material and last but not least the freedom to make
choices individuals and communities value doing and being. On the other hand,
sectoral driven forest policies have had limited success. For example protected
areas—a form of a legal intervention—has had only limited success in
conserving biodiversity and has often had detrimental impacts on poverty
reduction for many local communities living around protected areas. Protected
areas have essentially excluded local communities from having access to
resources that they have historically relied on for food and supplemental income
especially during times of stress.
A further insight
Integrated responses (IR) are gaining in importance in
both developing and developed countries but they have
had mixed results.
IR are responses that address degradation of ecosystem services
across a number of systems simultaneously, or that also explicitly
include objectives to enhance human well-being. IR occur at different
scales and across scales, and use a range of instruments for
implementation. Increasingly they are associated with the application of
multi-stakeholder processes and with decentralization, and they may
include actors and institutions from government, civil society and private
sector.
Examples include some multi-lateral environmental agreements,
environmental policy integration within national governments, and multisectoral approaches such as Integrated Coastal Zone Management.
Although many IR make ambitious claims about their likely benefits, in
practice the results of implementation have been mixed in terms of
ecological, social and economic impacts.
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