MILLENNIUM ECOSYSTEM ASSESSMENT

Ecosystems and Human Well-being Synthesis

Ecosystems
AND HUMAN
WELL-BEING
Synthesis

ISBN 1-59726-040-1

90000
WASHINGTON COVELO LONDON
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MILLENNIUM ECOSYSTEM ASSESSMENT

Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Board
The MA Board represents the users of the ﬁndings of the MA process.
Co-chairs

Robert T. Watson, Chief

Scientist, The World Bank
A.H. Zakri, Director, Instituteof Advanced Studies, United
Nations University

Millennium Ecosystem
Assessment Panel
Harold A. Mooney (co-chair),
Stanford University, United States
Angela Cropper (co-chair),
The Cropper Foundation, Trinidad
and Tobago
Doris Capistrano, Center for International Forestry Research, Indonesia
Stephen R. Carpenter, Universityof Wisconsin-Madison, United States
Kanchan Chopra, Institute of
Economic Growth, India
Partha Dasgupta, University ofCambridge, United Kingdom
Rik Leemans, Wageningen
University, Netherlands
Robert M. May, University of
Oxford, United Kingdom
Prabhu Pingali, Food andAgriculture Organization of theUnited Nations, Italy
Rashid Hassan, University of
Pretoria, South Africa
Cristián Samper, Smithsonian
National Museum of Natural History,
United States
Robert Scholes, Council for
Scientiﬁc and Industrial Research,
South Africa
Robert T. Watson, The World
Bank, United States (ex ofﬁcio)
A. H. Zakri, United Nations
University, Japan (ex ofﬁcio)
Zhao Shidong, Chinese Academyof Sciences, China
Editorial Board Chairs
José Sarukhán, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico
Anne Whyte, Mestor Associates
Ltd., Canada
MA Director

Walter V. Reid, Millennium
Ecosystem Assessment, Malaysia
and United States

Institutional
Representatives
Salvatore Arico, Programme
Ofﬁcer, Division of Ecologicaland Earth Sciences, United
Nations Educational, Scientiﬁcand Cultural Organization
Peter Bridgewater, Secretary
General, Ramsar Convention on
Wetlands
Hama Arba Diallo,
Executive Secretary, United
Nations Convention to
Combat Desertiﬁcation
Adel El-Beltagy, Director
General, International Center
for Agricultural Research in
Dry Areas, Consultative Groupon International Agricultural
Research
Max Finlayson, Chair, Scientiﬁc and Technical Review Panel,Ramsar Convention on Wetlands
Colin Galbraith, Chair,
Scientiﬁc Council, Convention
on Migratory Species
Erika Harms, Senior Program
Ofﬁcer for Biodiversity, United
Nations Foundation
Robert Hepworth, Acting
Executive Secretary, Convention
on Migratory Species
Olav Kjørven, Director,
Energy and Environment Group,
United Nations Development
Programme
Kerstin Leitner, Assistant
Director-General, Sustainable
Development and Healthy
Environments, World HealthOrganization
Alfred Oteng-Yeboah,
Chair, Subsidiary Body on
Scientiﬁc, Technical and Technological Advice, Convention
on Biological Diversity
Christian Prip, Chair,
Subsidiary Body on Scientiﬁc,
Technical and Technological
Advice, Convention on
Biological Diversity
Mario A. Ramos, Biodiversity
Program Manager, Global
Environment Facility

Thomas Rosswall, Executive
Director, International Council
for Science - ICSU
Achim Steiner, Director
General, IUCN - The World
Conservation Union
Halldor Thorgeirsson,
Coordinator, United Nations
Framework Convention on
Climate Change
Klaus Töpfer, Executive
Director, United Nations
Environment Programme
Jeff Tschirley, Chief,
Environmental and Natural
Resources Service, Research,
Extension and Training Division,
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
Riccardo Valentini, Chair,Committee on Science andTechnology, United Nations
Convention to Combat
Desertiﬁcation
Hamdallah Zedan,
Executive Secretary, Convention
on Biological Diversity
At-large Members

Fernando Almeida, Executive
President, Business Council for
Sustainable Development-Brazil
Phoebe Barnard, Global
Invasive Species Programme,
South Africa
Gordana Beltram,
Undersecretary, Ministry of
the Environment and Spatial
Planning, Slovenia
Delmar Blasco, Former
Secretary General, Ramsar
Convention on Wetlands, Spain
Antony Burgmans,
Chairman, Unilever N.V.,
Netherlands
Esther Camac-Ramirez,
Asociación Ixä Ca Vaá de
Desarrollo e Información
Indigena, Costa Rica
Angela Cropper (ex ofﬁcio),
President, The Cropper Foundation, Trinidad and Tobago
Partha Dasgupta, Professor,
Faculty of Economics andPolitics, University ofCambridge, United Kingdom
José María Figueres,
Fundación Costa Rica para el
Desarrollo Sostenible, Costa Rica
Fred Fortier, Indigenous
Peoples’ Biodiversity Information
Network, Canada

Mohamed H.A. Hassan,
Executive Director, Third World
Academy of Sciences for theDeveloping World, Italy
Jonathan Lash, President,
World Resources Institute,
United States
Wangari Maathai,Vice Minister for Environment,
Kenya
Paul Maro, Professor,
Department of Geography,
University of Dar es
Salaam, Tanzania
Harold A. Mooney(ex ofﬁcio), Professor,
Department of Biological
Sciences, Stanford University,
United States
Marina Motovilova, Facultyof Geography, Laboratory of
Moscow Region, Russia
M.K. Prasad, Environment
Centre of the Kerala Sastra
Sahitya Parishad, India
Walter V. Reid, Director,
Millennium Ecosystem
Assessment, Malaysia andUnited States
Henry Schacht, Past
Chairman of the Board, Lucent
Technologies, United StatesPeter Johan Schei,
Director, The Fridtjof Nansen
Institute, Norway
Ismail Serageldin, President,
Bibliotheca Alexandrina, Egypt
David Suzuki, Chair, David
Suzuki Foundation, Canada
M.S. Swaminathan,Chairman, MS Swaminathan
Research Foundation, India
José Galízia Tundisi,
President, International Instituteof Ecology, Brazil
Axel Wenblad, Vice President
Environmental Affairs, Skanska
AB, Sweden
Xu Guanhua, Minister,
Ministry of Science andTechnology, China
Muhammad Yunus,
Managing Director, Grameen
Bank, Bangladesh

Secretariat Support Organizations
The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) coordinates the Millennium Ecosystem
Assessment Secretariat, which is based at the following partner institutions:
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Italy
Institute of Economic Growth, India
International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), Mexico (until 2002)
Meridian Institute, United States
National Institute of Public Health and the Environment (RIVM), Netherlands (until mid-2004)
Scientiﬁc Committee on Problems of the Environment (SCOPE), France
UNEP-World Conservation Monitoring Centre, United Kingdom
University of Pretoria, South Africa
University of Wisconsin-Madison, United States
World Resources Institute (WRI), United States
WorldFish Center, Malaysia
Maps and graphics: Emmanuelle Bournay and Philippe Rekacewicz, UNEP/GRID-Arendal, Norway

The production of maps and graphics was made possible by the generous support of the Ministryof Foreign Affairs of Norway and UNEP/GRID-Arendal.
Photos:Front cover:■ Tran Thi Hoa, The World Bank
Back cover:■ David Woodfall/WWI/Peter Arnold, Inc.

Ecosystems
and Human
Well-being
Synthesis
A Report of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment
Core Writing Team

Walter V. Reid, Harold A. Mooney, Angela Cropper, Doris Capistrano, Stephen R. Carpenter, Kanchan Chopra,
Partha Dasgupta, Thomas Dietz, Anantha Kumar Duraiappah, Rashid Hassan, Roger Kasperson, Rik Leemans,
Robert M. May, Tony (A.J.) McMichael, Prabhu Pingali, Cristián Samper, Robert Scholes, Robert T. Watson,
A.H. Zakri, Zhao Shidong, Neville J. Ash, Elena Bennett, Pushpam Kumar, Marcus J. Lee, Ciara Raudsepp-Hearne,
Henk Simons, Jillian Thonell, and Monika B. Zurek
Extended Writing TeamMA Coordinating Lead Authors, Lead Authors, Contributing Authors, and Sub-global Assessment Coordinators
Review Editors

José Sarukhán and Anne Whyte (co-chairs) and MA Board of Review Editors

Suggested citation:
Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005. Ecosystems and Human Well-being: Synthesis.
Island Press, Washington, DC.
Copyright © 2005 World Resources InstituteAll rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this bookmay be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the copyright holder:
World Resources Institute, 10 G Street NE, Suite 800, Washington, DC 20002.
ISLAND PRESS is a trademark of The Center for Resource Economics.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data.
Ecosystems and human well-being : synthesis / Millennium Ecosystem Assessment.
p. cm. – (The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment series)
ISBN 1-59726-040-1 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Human ecology. 2. Ecosystem management. I. Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (Program) II. Series.
GF50.E26 2005
304.2–dc22
2005010265
British Cataloguing-in-Publication data available.
Printed on recycled, acid-free paperBook design by Dever Designs
Manufactured in the United States of America

Contents
Forewordii

Prefacev

Reader’s Guidex

Summary for Decision-makers

1

Finding 1: Ecosystem Change in Last 50 Years2

Finding 2: Gains and Losses from Ecosystem Change

5

Finding 3: Ecosystem Prospects for Next 50 Years

14

Finding 4: Reversing Ecosystem Degradation

18

Key Questions in the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment25

1. How have ecosystems changed?

26

2. How have ecosystem services and their uses changed?

39

3. How have ecosystem changes affected human well-being and poverty alleviation?

49

4. What are the most critical factors causing ecosystem changes?

64

5. How might ecosystems and their services change in the future under various plausible scenarios?

71

6. What can be learned about the consequences of ecosystem change for human well-beingat sub-global scales?

84

7. What is known about time scales, inertia, and the risk of nonlinear changes in ecosystems?

88

8. What options exist to manage ecosystems sustainably?

92

9. What are the most important uncertainties hindering decision-making concerning ecosystems?

101

Appendix A. Ecosystem Service Reports

103

Appendix B. Effectiveness of Assessed Responses

123

Appendix C. Authors, Coordinators, and Review Editors

132

Appendix D. Abbreviations, Acronyms, and Figure Sources

136

Appendix E. Assessment Report Tables of Contents137

Foreword
The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment was called for by United Nations Secretary-General Koﬁ Annan in 2000 in his
report to the UN General Assembly, We the Peoples: The Role of the United Nations in the 21st Century. Governments
subsequently supported the establishment of the assessment through decisions taken by three international
conventions, and the MA was initiated in 2001. The MA was conducted under the auspices of the United Nations,with the secretariat coordinated by the United Nations Environment Programme, and it was governed by a multistakeholder board that included representatives of international institutions, governments, business, NGOs, and indigenous
peoples. The objective of the MA was to assess the consequences of ecosystem change for human well-being and toestablish the scientiﬁc basis for actions needed to enhance the conservation and sustainable use of ecosystems and theircontributions to human well-being.
This report presents a synthesis and integration of the ﬁndings of the four MA Working Groups (Condition and
Trends, Scenarios, Responses, and Sub-global Assessments). It does not, however, provide a comprehensive summary ofeach Working Group report, and readers are encouraged to also review the ﬁndings of these separately. This synthesis isorganized around the core questions originally posed to the assessment: How have ecosystems and their services
changed? What has caused these changes? How have these changes affected human well-being? How might ecosystems
change in the future and what are the implications for human well-being? And what options exist to enhance the conservation of ecosystems and their contribution to human well-being?
This assessment would not have been possible without the extraordinary commitment of the more than 2,000
authors and reviewers worldwide who contributed their knowledge, creativity, time, and enthusiasm to this process.
We would like to express our gratitude to the members of the MA Assessment Panel, Coordinating Lead Authors,
Lead Authors, Contributing Authors, Board of Review Editors, and Expert Reviewers who contributed to this process,and we wish to acknowledge the in-kind support of their institutions, which enabled their participation. (The list ofreviewers is available at www.MAweb.org.) We also thank the members of the synthesis teams and the synthesis teamco-chairs: Zafar Adeel, Carlos Corvalan, Rebecca D’Cruz, Nick Davidson, Anantha Kumar Duraiappah, C. Max
Finlayson, Simon Hales, Jane Lubchenco, Anthony McMichael, Shahid Naeem, David Niemeijer, Steve Percy, Uriel
Safriel, and Robin White.
We would like to thank the host organizations of the MA Technical Support Units—WorldFish Center (Malaysia);
UNEP-World Conservation Monitoring Centre (United Kingdom); Institute of Economic Growth (India); National
Institute of Public Health and the Environment (Netherlands); University of Pretoria (South Africa), U.N. Food andAgriculture Organization; World Resources Institute, Meridian Institute, and Center for Limnology of the Universityof Wisconsin (all in the United States); Scientiﬁc Committee on Problems of the Environment (France); and International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (Mexico)—for the support they provided to the process. The Scenarios
Working Group was established as a joint project of the MA and the Scientiﬁc Committee on Problems of the Environment, and we thank SCOPE for the scientiﬁc input and oversight that it provided.
We thank the members of the MA Board (listed earlier) for the guidance and oversight they provided to this process
and we also thank the current and previous Board Alternates: Ivar Baste, Jeroen Bordewijk, David Cooper, Carlos
Corvalan, Nick Davidson, Lyle Glowka, Guo Risheng, Ju Hongbo, Ju Jin, Kagumaho (Bob) Kakuyo, Melinda Kimble,
Kanta Kumari, Stephen Lonergan, Charles Ian McNeill, Joseph Kalemani Mulongoy, Ndegwa Ndiang’ui, andMohamed Maged Younes. The contributions of past members of the MA Board were instrumental in shaping the MA
focus and process and these individuals include Philbert Brown, Gisbert Glaser, He Changchui, Richard Helmer,
Yolanda Kakabadse, Yoriko Kawaguchi, Ann Kern, Roberto Lenton, Corinne Lepage, Hubert Markl, Arnulf MüllerHelbrecht, Alfred Oteng-Yeboah, Seema Paul, Susan Pineda Mercado, Jan Plesnik, Peter Raven, Cristián Samper,ii Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i sOla Smith, Dennis Tirpak, Alvaro Umaña, and Meryl Williams. We wish to also thank the members of the Exploratory Steering Committee that designed the MA project in 1999–2000. This group included a number of the current
and past Board members, as well as Edward Ayensu, Daniel Claasen, Mark Collins, Andrew Dearing, Louise Fresco,
Madhav Gadgil, Habiba Gitay, Zuzana Guziova, Calestous Juma, John Krebs, Jane Lubchenco, Jeffrey McNeely,
Ndegwa Ndiang’ui, Janos Pasztor, Prabhu L. Pingali, Per Pinstrup-Andersen, and José Sarukhán. And we would like toacknowledge the support and guidance provided by the secretariats and the scientiﬁc and technical bodies of theConvention on Biological Diversity, the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, the Convention to Combat Desertiﬁcation,and the Convention on Migratory Species, which have helped to deﬁne the focus of the MA and of this report. We are
grateful to two members of the Board of Review Editors, Gordon Orians and Richard Norgaard, who played a particularly important role during the review and revision of this synthesis report. And, we would like to thank Ian Noble andMingsarn Kaosa-ard for their contributions as members of the Assessment Panel during 2002.
We thank the interns and volunteers who worked with the MA Secretariat, part-time members of the Secretariat
staff, the administrative staff of the host organizations, and colleagues in other organizations who were instrumental in
facilitating the process: Isabelle Alegre, Adlai Amor, Hyacinth Billings, Cecilia Blasco, Delmar Blasco, Herbert Caudill,
Lina Cimarrusti, Emily Cooper, Dalène du Plessis, Keisha-Maria Garcia, Habiba Gitay, Helen Gray, Sherry Heileman,
Norbert Henninger, Tim Hirsch, Toshie Honda, Francisco Ingouville, Humphrey Kagunda, Brygida Kubiak, Nicholas
Lapham, Liz Levitt, Christian Marx, Stephanie Moore, John Mukoza, Arivudai Nambi, Laurie Neville, RosemariePhilips, Veronique Plocq Fichelet, Maggie Powell, Janet Ranganathan, Carolina Katz Reid, Liana Reilly, Carol Rosen,
Mariana Sanchez Abregu, Anne Schram, Jean Sedgwick, Tang Siang Nee, Darrell Taylor, Tutti Tischler, Daniel
Tunstall, Woody Turner, Mark Valentine, Elsie Vélez-Whited, Elizabeth Wilson, and Mark Zimsky. Special thanks
are due to Linda Starke, who skillfully edited this report, and to Philippe Rekacewicz and Emmanuelle Bournay of
UNEP/GRID-Arendal, who prepared the Figures.
We also want to acknowledge the support of a large number of nongovernmental organizations and networks
around the world that have assisted in outreach efforts: Alexandria University, Argentine Business Council for
Sustainable Development, Asociación Ixa Ca Vaá (Costa Rica), Arab Media Forum for Environment and Development, Brazilian Business Council on Sustainable Development, Charles University (Czech Republic), Chinese Academy of Sciences, European Environmental Agency, European Union of Science Journalists’ Associations, EIS-Africa(Burkina Faso), Forest Institute of the State of São Paulo, Foro Ecológico (Peru), Fridtjof Nansen Institute (Norway),
Fundación Natura (Ecuador), Global Development Learning Network, Indonesian Biodiversity Foundation, Institutefor Biodiversity Conservation and Research–Academy of Sciences of Bolivia, International Alliance of Indigenous Peoples of the Tropical Forests, IUCN ofﬁce in Uzbekistan, IUCN Regional Ofﬁces for West Africa and South America,
Permanent Inter-States Committee for Drought Control in the Sahel, Peruvian Society of Environmental Law, Probioandes (Peru), Professional Council of Environmental Analysts of Argentina, Regional Center AGRHYMET (Niger),
Regional Environmental Centre for Central Asia, Resources and Research for Sustainable Development (Chile), Royal
Society (United Kingdom), Stockholm University, Suez Canal University, Terra Nuova (Nicaragua), The Nature
Conservancy (United States), United Nations University, University of Chile, University of the Philippines, World
Assembly of Youth, World Business Council for Sustainable Development, WWF-Brazil, WWF-Italy, and WWF-US.
We are extremely grateful to the donors that provided major ﬁnancial support for the MA and the MA Sub-global
Assessments: Global Environment Facility; United Nations Foundation; The David and Lucile Packard Foundation;
The World Bank; Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research; United Nations Environment Programme; Government of China; Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Government of Norway; Kingdom of Saudi Arabia;

Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s iii

and the Swedish International Biodiversity Programme. We also thank other organizations that provided ﬁnancial
support: Asia Paciﬁc Network for Global Change Research; Association of Caribbean States; British High Commission, Trinidad and Tobago; Caixa Geral de Depósitos, Portugal; Canadian International Development Agency;
Christensen Fund; Cropper Foundation, Environmental Management Authority of Trinidad and Tobago; Ford
Foundation; Government of India; International Council for Science; International Development Research Centre;
Island Resources Foundation; Japan Ministry of Environment; Laguna Lake Development Authority; Philippine
Department of Environment and Natural Resources; Rockefeller Foundation; U.N. Educational, Scientiﬁc and Cultural Organization; UNEP Division of Early Warning and Assessment; United Kingdom Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs; United States National Aeronautic and Space Administration; and Universidade de
Coimbra, Portugal. Generous in-kind support has been provided by many other institutions (a full list is available atwww.MAweb.org). The work to establish and design the MA was supported by grants from The Avina Group, The
David and Lucile Packard Foundation, Global Environment Facility, Directorate for Nature Management of Norway,
Swedish International Development Cooperation Authority, Summit Foundation, UNDP, UNEP, United Nations
Foundation, United States Agency for International Development, Wallace Global Fund, and The World Bank.
We give special thanks for the extraordinary contributions of the coordinators and full-time staff of the MA
Secretariat: Neville Ash, Elena Bennett, Chan Wai Leng, John Ehrmann, Lori Han, Christine Jalleh, Nicole Khi,
Pushpam Kumar, Marcus Lee, Belinda Lim, Nicolas Lucas, Mampiti Matete, Tasha Merican, Meenakshi Rathore,
Ciara Raudsepp-Hearne, Henk Simons, Sara Suriani, Jillian Thonell, Valerie Thompson, and Monika Zurek.
Finally, we would particularly like to thank Angela Cropper and Harold Mooney, the co-chairs of the MA Assessment Panel, and José Sarukhán and Anne Whyte, the co-chairs of the MA Review Board, for their skillful leadershipof the assessment and review processes, and Walter Reid, the MA Director for his pivotal role in establishing theassessment, his leadership, and his outstanding contributions to the process.

Dr. Robert T. Watson
MA Board Co-chair
Chief Scientist
The World Bank

iv Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i sDr. A.H. Zakri
MA Board Co-chair
Director, Institute for Advanced Studies
United Nations University

Preface
The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment was carried out between 2001 and 2005 to assess the consequences of ecosystem change for human well-being and to establish the scientiﬁc basis for actions needed to enhance the conservationand sustainable use of ecosystems and their contributions to human well-being. The MA responds to government
requests for information received through four international conventions—the Convention on Biological Diversity, theUnited Nations Convention to Combat Desertiﬁcation, the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, and the Convention on
Migratory Species—and is designed to also meet needs of other stakeholders, including the business community, thehealth sector, nongovernmental organizations, and indigenous peoples. The sub-global assessments also aimed to meetthe needs of users in the regions where they were undertaken.
The assessment focuses on the linkages between ecosystems and human well-being and, in particular, on “ecosystemservices.” An ecosystem is a dynamic complex of plant, animal, and microorganism communities and the nonliving
environment interacting as a functional unit. The MA deals with the full range of ecosystems—from those relatively
undisturbed, such as natural forests, to landscapes with mixed patterns of human use, to ecosystems intensively managed and modiﬁed by humans, such as agricultural land and urban areas. Ecosystem services are the beneﬁts people
obtain from ecosystems. These include provisioning services such as food, water, timber, and ﬁber; regulating services that
affect climate, ﬂoods, disease, wastes, and water quality; cultural services that provide recreational, aesthetic, and spiritual beneﬁts; and supporting services such as soil formation, photosynthesis, and nutrient cycling. (See Figure A.) The
human species, while buffered against environmental changes by culture and technology, is fundamentally dependent
on the ﬂow of ecosystem services.
The MA examines how changes in ecosystem services inﬂuence human well-being. Human well-being is assumed tohave multiple constituents, including the basic material for a good life, such as secure and adequate livelihoods, enoughfood at all times, shelter, clothing, and access to goods; health, including feeling well and having a healthy physicalenvironment, such as clean air and access to clean water; good social relations, including social cohesion, mutual respect,
and the ability to help others and provide for children; security, including secure access to natural and other resources,
personal safety, and security from natural and human-made disasters; and freedom of choice and action, including theopportunity to achieve what an individual values doing and being. Freedom of choice and action is inﬂuenced by otherconstituents of well-being (as well as by other factors, notably education) and is also a precondition for achieving othercomponents of well-being, particularly with respect to equity and fairness.
The conceptual framework for the MA posits that people are integral parts of ecosystems and that a dynamic interaction exists between them and other parts of ecosystems, with the changing human condition driving, both directly
and indirectly, changes in ecosystems and thereby causing changes in human well-being. (See Figure B.) At the sametime, social, economic, and cultural factors unrelated to ecosystems alter the human condition, and many naturalforces inﬂuence ecosystems. Although the MA emphasizes the linkages between ecosystems and human well-being, it
recognizes that the actions people take that inﬂuence ecosystems result not just from concern about human well-being
but also from considerations of the intrinsic value of species and ecosystems. Intrinsic value is the value of somethingin and for itself, irrespective of its utility for someone else.
The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment synthesizes information from the scientiﬁc literature and relevant peerreviewed datasets and models. It incorporates knowledge held by the private sector, practitioners, local communities,
and indigenous peoples. The MA did not aim to generate new primary knowledge, but instead sought to add value toexisting information by collating, evaluating, summarizing, interpreting, and communicating it in a useful form.
Assessments like this one apply the judgment of experts to existing knowledge to provide scientiﬁcally credible answers
to policy-relevant questions. The focus on policy-relevant questions and the explicit use of expert judgment distinguish
this type of assessment from a scientiﬁc review.

Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s v

Figure A. Linkages between Ecosystem Services and Human Well-being
This Figure depicts the strength of linkages between categories of ecosystem services and components of human well-being that are commonly
encountered, and includes indications of the extent to which it is possible for socioeconomic factors to mediate the linkage. (For example, if it ispossible to purchase a substitute for a degraded ecosystem service, then there is a high potential for mediation.) The strength of the linkages
and the potential for mediation differ in different ecosystems and regions. In addition to the inﬂuence of ecosystem services on human well-being
depicted here, other factors—including other environmental factors as well as economic, social, technological, and cultural factors—inﬂuence
human well-being, and ecosystems are in turn affected by changes in human well-being. (See Figure B.)

CONSTITUENTS OF WELL-BEINGECOSYSTEM SERVICES
Provisioning
FOOD
FRESH WATER
WOOD AND FIBER
FUEL
...

Supporting
NUTRIENT CYCLING
SOIL FORMATIONPRIMARY PRODUCTION...

Regulating
CLIMATE REGULATIONFLOOD REGULATIONDISEASE REGULATIONWATER PURIFICATION...

Cultural
AESTHETICSPIRITUALEDUCATIONAL
RECREATIONAL...

LIFE ON EARTH - BIODIVERSITY
ARROW’S COLOR
Potential for mediation bysocioeconomic factors

ARROW’S WIDTH
Intensity of linkages between ecosystemservices and human well-being

Low

Weak

MediumMediumHigh

Strongvi Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i sSecurityPERSONAL SAFETYSECURE RESOURCE ACCESSSECURITY FROM DISASTERS

Basic material
for good life
ADEQUATE LIVELIHOODSSUFFICIENT NUTRITIOUS FOOD
SHELTERACCESS TO GOODS

HealthSTRENGTHFEELING WELLACCESS TO CLEAN AIR
AND WATER

Freedomof choiceand action
OPPORTUNITY TO BE
ABLE TO ACHIEVEWHAT AN INDIVIDUALVALUES DOING
AND BEING

Good social relations
SOCIAL COHESIONMUTUAL RESPECT
ABILITY TO HELP OTHERS
Source: Millennium Ecosystem Assessment

Figure B. Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Conceptual Framework of Interactions between

Biodiversity, Ecosystem Services, Human Well-being, and Drivers of Change
Changes in drivers that indirectly affect biodiversity, such as population, technology, and lifestyle (upper right corner of Figure), can lead to changes
in drivers directly affecting biodiversity, such as the catch of ﬁsh or the application of fertilizers (lower right corner). These result in changes toecosystems and the services they provide (lower left corner), thereby affecting human well-being. These interactions can take place at more than
one scale and can cross scales. For example, an international demand for timber may lead to a regional loss of forest cover, which increases
ﬂood magnitude along a local stretch of a river. Similarly, the interactions can take place across different time scales. Different strategies andinterventions can be applied at many points in this framework to enhance human well-being and conserve ecosystems.

Source: Millennium Ecosystem Assessment

Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s vii

Five overarching questions, along with more detailed lists of user needs developed through discussions with stakeholders or provided by governments through international conventions, guided the issues that were assessed:■ What are the current condition and trends of ecosystems, ecosystem services, and human well-being?
■ What are plausible future changes in ecosystems and their ecosystem services and the consequent changes inhuman well-being?
■ What can be done to enhance well-being and conserve ecosystems? What are the strengths and weaknesses of
response options that can be considered to realize or avoid speciﬁc futures?
■ What are the key uncertainties that hinder effective decision-making concerning ecosystems?
■ What tools and methodologies developed and used in the MA can strengthen capacity to assess ecosystems, theservices they provide, their impacts on human well-being, and the strengths and weaknesses of response options?
The MA was conducted as a multiscale assessment, with interlinked assessments undertaken at local, watershed,national, regional, and global scales. A global ecosystem assessment cannot easily meet all the needs of decision-makers
at national and sub-national scales because the management of any particular ecosystem must be tailored to theparticular characteristics of that ecosystem and to the demands placed on it. However, an assessment focused only ona particular ecosystem or particular nation is insufﬁcient because some processes are global and because local goods,
services, matter, and energy are often transferred across regions. Each of the component assessments was guided by the
MA conceptual framework and beneﬁted from the presence of assessments undertaken at larger and smaller scales.
The sub-global assessments were not intended to serve as representative samples of all ecosystems; rather, they wereto meet the needs of decision-makers at the scales at which they were undertaken.
The work of the MA was conducted through four working groups, each of which prepared a report of its ﬁndings.
At the global scale, the Condition and Trends Working Group assessed the state of knowledge on ecosystems, driversof ecosystem change, ecosystem services, and associated human well-being around the year 2000. The assessment
aimed to be comprehensive with regard to ecosystem services, but its coverage is not exhaustive. The Scenarios Working Group considered the possible evolution of ecosystem services during the twenty-ﬁrst century by developing fourglobal scenarios exploring plausible future changes in drivers, ecosystems, ecosystem services, and human well-being.
The Responses Working Group examined the strengths and weaknesses of various response options that have beenused to manage ecosystem services and identiﬁed promising opportunities for improving human well-being whileconserving ecosystems. The report of the Sub-global Assessments Working Group contains lessons learned from
the MA sub-global assessments. The ﬁrst product of the MA—Ecosystems and Human Well-being: A Framework forAssessment, published in 2003—outlined the focus, conceptual basis, and methods used in the MA.
Approximately 1,360 experts from 95 countries were involved as authors of the assessment reports, as participantsin the sub-global assessments, or as members of the Board of Review Editors. (See Appendix C for the list of
coordinating lead authors, sub-global assessment coordinators, and review editors.) The latter group, which involved
80 experts, oversaw the scientiﬁc review of the MA reports by governments and experts and ensured that all review
comments were appropriately addressed by the authors. All MA ﬁndings underwent two rounds of expert andgovernmental review. Review comments were received from approximately 850 individuals (of which roughly 250
were submitted by authors of other chapters in the MA), although in a number of cases (particularly in the case ofgovernments and MA-afﬁliated scientiﬁc organizations), people submitted collated comments that had been preparedby a number of reviewers in their governments or institutions.

viii Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i sThe MA was guided by a Board that included representatives of ﬁve international conventions, ﬁve U.N. agencies,
international scientiﬁc organizations, governments, and leaders from the private sector, nongovernmental organizations, and indigenous groups. A 15-member Assessment Panel of leading social and natural scientists oversaw thetechnical work of the assessment, supported by a secretariat with ofﬁces in Europe, North America, South America,
Asia, and Africa and coordinated by the United Nations Environment Programme.
The MA is intended to be used:■ to identify priorities for action;■ as a benchmark for future assessments;■ as a framework and source of tools for assessment, planning, and management;■ to gain foresight concerning the consequences of decisions affecting ecosystems;■ to identify response options to achieve human development and sustainability goals;■ to help build individual and institutional capacity to undertake integrated ecosystem assessments and act on theﬁndings; and■ to guide future research.
Because of the broad scope of the MA and the complexity of the interactions between social and natural systems, it
proved to be difﬁcult to provide deﬁnitive information for some of the issues addressed in the MA. Relatively few
ecosystem services have been the focus of research and monitoring and, as a consequence, research ﬁndings and data
are often inadequate for a detailed global assessment. Moreover, the data and information that are available are generally related to either the characteristics of the ecological system or the characteristics of the social system, not to the
all-important interactions between these systems. Finally, the scientiﬁc and assessment tools and models available toundertake a cross-scale integrated assessment and to project future changes in ecosystem services are only now being
developed. Despite these challenges, the MA was able to provide considerable information relevant to most of the
focal questions. And by identifying gaps in data and information that prevent policy-relevant questions from being
answered, the assessment can help to guide research and monitoring that may allow those questions to be answeredin future assessments.

Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s ix

Reader’s Guide
This report presents a synthesis and integration of the ﬁndings of the four MA Working Groups along with moredetailed ﬁndings for selected ecosystem services concerning condition and trends and scenarios (see Appendix A) and
response options (see Appendix B). Five additional synthesis reports were prepared for ease of use by speciﬁc audiences: CBD (biodiversity), UNCCD (desertiﬁcation), Ramsar Convention (wetlands), business, and the health sector.
Each MA sub-global assessment will also produce additional reports to meet the needs of its own audience. The fulltechnical assessment reports of the four MA Working Groups will be published in mid-2005 by Island Press. All
printed materials of the assessment, along with core data and a glossary of terminology used in the technical reports,
will be available on the Internet at www.MAweb.org. Appendix D lists the acronyms and abbreviations used in thisreport and includes additional information on sources for some of the Figures. Throughout this report, dollar signs
indicate U.S. dollars and tons mean metric tons.
References that appear in parentheses in the body of this synthesis report are to the underlying chapters in the fulltechnical assessment reports of each Working Group. (A list of the assessment report chapters is provided in Appendix
E.) To assist the reader, citations to the technical volumes generally specify sections of chapters or speciﬁc Boxes,
Tables, or Figures, based on ﬁnal drafts of the chapter. Some chapter subsection numbers may change during ﬁnal
copyediting, however, after this synthesis report has been printed. Bracketed references within the Summary for
Decision-makers are to the key questions of this full synthesis report, where additional information on each topic
can be found.
In this report, the following words have been used where appropriate to indicate judgmental estimates of certainty,
based on the collective judgment of the authors, using the observational evidence, modeling results, and theory thatthey have examined: very certain (98% or greater probability), high certainty (85–98% probability), medium certainty (65–85% probability), low certainty (52–65% probability), and very uncertain (50–52% probability). In otherinstances, a qualitative scale to gauge the level of scientiﬁc understanding is used: well established, established but
incomplete, competing explanations, and speculative. Each time these terms are used they appear in italics.

x Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i sSummary for
Decision-makers

Everyone in the world depends completely on Earth’s ecosystems and the services they provide, such as food,water, disease management, climate regulation, spiritual fulﬁllment, and aesthetic enjoyment. Over the past
50 years, humans have changed these ecosystems more rapidly and extensively than in any comparable periodof time in human history, largely to meet rapidly growing demands for food, fresh water, timber, ﬁber, and fuel.
This transformation of the planet has contributed to substantial net gains in human well-being and economic
development. But not all regions and groups of people have beneﬁted from this process—in fact, many havebeen harmed. Moreover, the full costs associated with these gains are only now becoming apparent.
Three major problems associated with our management of theworld’s ecosystems are already causing signiﬁcant harm to somepeople, particularly the poor, and unless addressed will substantially diminish the long-term beneﬁts we obtain from ecosystems:■ First, approximately 60% (15 out of 24) of the ecosystemservices examined during the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment
are being degraded or used unsustainably, including fresh water,
capture ﬁsheries, air and water puriﬁcation, and the regulation ofregional and local climate, natural hazards, and pests. The fullcosts of the loss and degradation of these ecosystem services are
difﬁcult to measure, but the available evidence demonstrates thatthey are substantial and growing. Many ecosystem services havebeen degraded as a consequence of actions taken to increase thesupply of other services, such as food. These trade-offs often shift
the costs of degradation from one group of people to another ordefer costs to future generations.
■ Second, there is established but incomplete evidence thatchanges being made in ecosystems are increasing the likelihoodof nonlinear changes in ecosystems (including accelerating,abrupt, and potentially irreversible changes) that have importantconsequences for human well-being. Examples of such changes
include disease emergence, abrupt alterations in water quality,
the creation of “dead zones” in coastal waters, the collapse ofﬁsheries, and shifts in regional climate.

Four Main Findings■ Over the past 50 years, humans have changed ecosystems

more rapidly and extensively than in any comparable period oftime in human history, largely to meet rapidly growing demands forfood, fresh water, timber, ﬁber, and fuel. This has resulted in a substantial and largely irreversible loss in the diversity of life on Earth.
■ The changes that have been made to ecosystems have contributed to substantial net gains in human well-being and economic
development, but these gains have been achieved at growing
costs in the form of the degradation of many ecosystem services,increased risks of nonlinear changes, and the exacerbation of poverty for some groups of people. These problems, unless addressed,
will substantially diminish the beneﬁts that future generations obtainfrom ecosystems.
■ The degradation of ecosystem services could grow signiﬁcantly
worse during the ﬁrst half of this century and is a barrier to achieving the Millennium Development Goals.
■ The challenge of reversing the degradation of ecosystems while
meeting increasing demands for their services can be partially
met under some scenarios that the MA has considered, but these
involve signiﬁcant changes in policies, institutions, and practices
that are not currently under way. Many options exist to conserve or
enhance speciﬁc ecosystem services in ways that reduce
negative trade-offs or that provide positive synergies with otherecosystem services.

Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s 1

■ Third, the harmful effects of the degradation of ecosystem ser-vices (the persistent decrease in the capacity of an ecosystem todeliver services) are being borne disproportionately by the poor, arecontributing to growing inequities and disparities across groups ofpeople, and are sometimes the principal factor causing poverty andsocial conﬂict. This is not to say that ecosystem changes such asincreased food production have not also helped to lift many people
out of poverty or hunger, but these changes have harmed otherindividuals and communities, and their plight has been largely
overlooked. In all regions, and particularly in sub-Saharan Africa,
the condition and management of ecosystem services is a dominant factor inﬂuencing prospects for reducing poverty.
The degradation of ecosystem services is already a signiﬁcantbarrier to achieving the Millennium Development Goals agreed
to by the international community in September 2000 and theharmful consequences of this degradation could grow signiﬁcantly worse in the next 50 years. The consumption of ecosystem services, which is unsustainable in many cases, will continue
to grow as a consequence of a likely three- to sixfold increase inglobal GDP by 2050 even while global population growth isexpected to slow and level off in mid-century. Most of theimportant direct drivers of ecosystem change are unlikely todiminish in the ﬁrst half of the century and two drivers—
climate change and excessive nutrient loading—will become
more severe.
Already, many of the regions facing the greatest challenges
in achieving the MDGs coincide with those facing signiﬁcant
problems of ecosystem degradation. Rural poor people, a primary target of the MDGs, tend to be most directly reliant on
ecosystem services and most vulnerable to changes in those services. More generally, any progress achieved in addressing the
MDGs of poverty and hunger eradication, improved health, andenvironmental sustainability is unlikely to be sustained if mostof the ecosystem services on which humanity relies continue tobe degraded. In contrast, the sound management of ecosystemservices provides cost-effective opportunities for addressing
multiple development goals in a synergistic manner.
There is no simple ﬁx to these problems since they arise fromthe interaction of many recognized challenges, including climatechange, biodiversity loss, and land degradation, each of which iscomplex to address in its own right. Past actions to slow or reverse
the degradation of ecosystems have yielded signiﬁcant beneﬁts,
but these improvements have generally not kept pace with growing pressures and demands. Nevertheless, there is tremendous
scope for action to reduce the severity of these problems in the
coming decades. Indeed, three of four detailed scenarios examinedby the MA suggest that signiﬁcant changes in policies, institutions, and practices can mitigate some but not all of the negative
consequences of growing pressures on ecosystems. But thechanges required are substantial and are not currently under way.
An effective set of responses to ensure the sustainable management of ecosystems requires substantial changes in institutions and2 Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i sgovernance, economic policies and incentives, social and behavior
factors, technology, and knowledge. Actions such as the integrationof ecosystem management goals in various sectors (such as agriculture, forestry, ﬁnance, trade, and health), increased transparency
and accountability of government and private-sector performancein ecosystem management, elimination of perverse subsidies,greater use of economic instruments and market-based approaches,
empowerment of groups dependent on ecosystem services oraffected by their degradation, promotion of technologies enabling
increased crop yields without harmful environmental impacts,
ecosystem restoration, and the incorporation of nonmarket valuesof ecosystems and their services in management decisions all
could substantially lessen the severity of these problems in the next
several decades.
The remainder of this Summary for Decision-makers presents
the four major ﬁndings of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment on the problems to be addressed and the actions needed toenhance the conservation and sustainable use of ecosystems.
Finding #1: Over the past 50 years, humans have changed
ecosystems more rapidly and extensively than in any comparable
period of time in human history, largely to meet rapidly growing demands for food, fresh water, timber, ﬁber, and fuel. This
has resulted in a substantial and largely irreversible loss in thediversity of life on Earth.

The structure and functioning of the world’s ecosystems
changed more rapidly in the second half of the twentiethcentury than at any time in human history. [1]■ More land was converted to cropland in the 30 years after
1950 than in the 150 years between 1700 and 1850. Cultivatedsystems (areas where at least 30% of the landscape is in croplands, shifting cultivation, conﬁned livestock production, or
freshwater aquaculture) now cover one quarter of Earth’s terrestrial surface. (See Figure 1.) Areas of rapid change in forest land
cover and land degradation are shown in Figure 2.
■ Approximately 20% of the world’s coral reefs were lost andan additional 20% degraded in the last several decades of thetwentieth century, and approximately 35% of mangrove area waslost during this time (in countries for which sufﬁcient data exist,
which encompass about half of the area of mangroves).
■ The amount of water impounded behind dams quadrupledsince 1960, and three to six times as much water is held inreservoirs as in natural rivers. Water withdrawals from rivers
and lakes doubled since 1960; most water use (70% worldwide)
is for agriculture.
■ Since 1960, ﬂows of reactive (biologically available) nitrogenin terrestrial ecosystems have doubled, and ﬂows of phosphorus
have tripled. More than half of all the synthetic nitrogen fertilizer,
which was ﬁrst manufactured in 1913, ever used on the planet has
been used since 1985.

Figure 1. Extent of Cultivated Systems, 2000. Cultivated systems cover 24% of the terrestrial surface.

Source: Millennium Ecosystem Assessment

Figure 2. Locations Reported by Various Studies as Undergoing High Rates of Land CoverChange in the Past Few Decades (C.SDM)

In the case of forest cover change, the studies refer to the period 1980–2000 and are based on national statistics, remote sensing, and to a limited
degree expert opinion. In the case of land cover change resulting from degradation in drylands (desertiﬁcation), the period is unspeciﬁed but inferred to
be within the last half-century, and the major study was entirely based on expert opinion, with associated low certainty. Change in cultivated area is notshown. Note that areas showing little current change are often locations that have already undergone major historical change (see Figure 1).

Source: Millennium Ecosystem Assessment

Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s 3

■ Since 1750, the atmospheric concentrationof carbon dioxide has increased by about 32%(from about 280 to 376 parts per million in2003), primarily due to the combustion of fossil
fuels and land use changes. Approximately 60%of that increase (60 parts per million) has takenplace since 1959.
Humans are fundamentally, and to a signiﬁcant extent irreversibly, changing the diversityof life on Earth, and most of these changes
represent a loss of biodiversity. [1]■ More than two thirds of the area of 2 of theworld’s 14 major terrestrial biomes and morethan half of the area of 4 other biomes had been
converted by 1990, primarily to agriculture.
(See Figure 3.)■ Across a range of taxonomic groups, either
the population size or range or both of the
majority of species is currently declining.
■ The distribution of species on Earth isbecoming more homogenous; in other words,
the set of species in any one region of the worldis becoming more similar to the set in otherregions primarily as a result of introductions ofspecies, both intentionally and inadvertently inassociation with increased travel and shipping.
■ The number of species on the planet isdeclining. Over the past few hundred years,
humans have increased the species extinction
rate by as much as 1,000 times over backgroundrates typical over the planet’s history (medium
certainty). (See Figure 4.) Some 10–30% of
mammal, bird, and amphibian species are
currently threatened with extinction (medium tohigh certainty). Freshwater ecosystems tend tohave the highest proportion of species threatened with extinction.
■ Genetic diversity has declined globally,
particularly among cultivated species.
Most changes to ecosystems have been madeto meet a dramatic growth in the demand forfood, water, timber, ﬁber, and fuel. [2] Someecosystem changes have been the inadvertent
result of activities unrelated to the use of ecosystem services, such as the construction of roads,
ports, and cities and the discharge of pollutants.
But most ecosystem changes were the direct orindirect result of changes made to meet growing
demands for ecosystem services, and in particular growing demands for food, water, timber,ﬁber, and fuel (fuelwood and hydropower).

Figure 3. Conversion of Terrestrial Biomesa(Adapted from C4, S10)

It is not possible to estimate accurately the extent of different biomes prior tosigniﬁcant human impact, but it is possible to determine the “potential” area of biomes
based on soil and climatic conditions. This Figure shows how much of that potential
area is estimated to have been converted by 1950 (medium certainty), how much
was converted between 1950 and 1990 (medium certainty), and how much would
be converted under the four MA scenarios (low certainty) between 1990 and 2050.
Mangroves are not included here because the area was too small to be accurately
assessed. Most of the conversion of these biomes is to cultivated systems.
Fraction of potential area converted– 10

0

20 30 40 50

60

70 80

90 100 %MEDITERRANEAN FORESTS,WOODLANDS, AND SCRUBTEMPERATE FORESTSTEPPE AND WOODLANDTEMPERATE BROADLEAFAND MIXED FORESTSTROPICAL AND
SUB-TROPICAL DRY
BROADLEAF FORESTSFLOODED GRASSLANDSAND SAVANNAS
TROPICAL AND SUB-TROPICALGRASSLANDS, SAVANNAS,
AND SHRUBLANDSTROPICAL AND SUB-TROPICALCONIFEROUS FORESTS
DESERTSMONTANE GRASSLANDSAND SHRUBLANDSTROPICAL AND SUB-TROPICAL
MOIST BROADLEAF FORESTSTEMPERATECONIFEROUS FORESTSBOREAL
FORESTSTUNDRA

Conversion of original biomes
Loss between
Loss by1950 and 1990
1950

Projected loss
by 2050ba
A biome is the largest unit of ecological classification that is convenient to recognize below theentire globe, such as temperate broadleaf forests or montane grasslands. A biome is a widelyused ecological categorization, and because considerable ecological data have been reported
and modeling undertaken using this categorization, some information in this assessment can only
be reported based on biomes. Whenever possible, however, the MA reports information using
10 socioecological systems, such as forest, cultivated, coastal, and marine, because these
correspond to the regions of responsibility of different government ministries and because they
are the categories used within the Convention on Biological Diversity.
b
According to the four MA scenarios. For 2050 projections, the average value of the projections
under the four scenarios is plotted and the error bars (black lines) represent the rangeof values from the different scenarios.

Source: Millennium Ecosystem Assessment

4 Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s

10Between 1960 and 2000, the demand for ecosystem services
grew signiﬁcantly as world population doubled to 6 billion people and the global economy increased more than sixfold. To meetthis demand, food production increased by roughly two-and-ahalf times, water use doubled, wood harvests for pulp and paper
production tripled, installed hydropower capacity doubled, andtimber production increased by more than half.
The growing demand for these ecosystem services was met
both by consuming an increasing fraction of the available supply(for example, diverting more water for irrigation or capturing
more ﬁsh from the sea) and by raising the production of some
services, such as crops and livestock. The latter has been accomplished through the use of new technologies (such as new cropvarieties, fertilization, and irrigation) as well as through increasing the area managed for the services in the case of crop andlivestock production and aquaculture.

Finding #2: The changes that have been made to ecosystems
have contributed to substantial net gains in human well-being
and economic development, but these gains have been achieved
at growing costs in the form of the degradation of many ecosystem services, increased risks of nonlinear changes, and the exacerbation of poverty for some groups of people. These problems,
unless addressed, will substantially diminish the beneﬁts that
future generations obtain from ecosystems.

In the aggregate, and for most countries, changes made to
the world’s ecosystems in recent decades have provided substantial beneﬁts for human well-being and national development.
[3] Many of the most signiﬁcant changes to ecosystems havebeen essential to meet growing needs for food and water; these

Figure 4. Species Extinction Rates (Adapted from C4 Fig 4.22)“Distant past” refers to average
extinction rates as estimated fromthe fossil record. “Recent past”
refers to extinction rates calculated
from known extinctions of species(lower estimate) or known
extinctions plus “possibly extinct”
species (upper bound). A species
is considered to be “possibly
extinct” if it is believed by experts
to be extinct but extensive surveys
have not yet been undertaken
to conﬁrm its disappearance.
“Future” extinctions are modelderived estimates using a variety oftechniques, including species-areamodels, rates at which species
are shifting to increasingly morethreatened categories, extinction
probabilities associated with the
IUCN categories of threat, impacts
of projected habitat loss on species
currently threatened with habitat
loss, and correlation of species
loss with energy consumption. The
time frame and species groups
involved differ among the “future”
estimates, but in general refer toeither future loss of species basedon the level of threat that exists
today or current and future loss of species as a result of habitat changes taking place over the period of roughly 1970 to 2050. Estimates
based on the fossil record are low certainty; lower-bound estimates for known extinctions are high certainty and upper-bound estimates are
medium certainty; lower-bound estimates for modeled extinctions are low certainty and upper-bound estimates are speculative. The rate of
known extinctions of species in the past century is roughly 50–500 times greater than the extinction rate calculated from the fossil record of
0.1–1 extinctions per 1,000 species per 1,000 years. The rate is up to 1,000 times higher than the background extinction rates if possibly
extinct species are included.

Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s 5changes have helped reduce the proportion of malnourishedpeople and improved human health. Agriculture, including ﬁsheries and forestry, has been the mainstay of strategies for thedevelopment of countries for centuries, providing revenues thathave enabled investments in industrialization and poverty alleviation. Although the value of food production in 2000 was only
about 3% of gross world product, the agricultural labor force
accounts for approximately 22% of the world’s population, half
the world’s total labor force, and 24% of GDP in countries withper capita incomes of less than $765 (the low-income developing
countries, as deﬁned by the World Bank).
These gains have been achieved, however, at growing costs inthe form of the degradation of many ecosystem services,increased risks of nonlinear changes in ecosystems, the exacerbation of poverty for some people, and growing inequities anddisparities across groups of people.

Degradation and Unsustainable
Use of Ecosystem Services
Approximately 60% (15 out of 24) of the ecosystem services
evaluated in this assessment (including 70% of regulating andcultural services) are being degraded or used unsustainably. [2](See Table 1.) Ecosystem services that have been degraded overthe past 50 years include capture ﬁsheries, water supply, waste
treatment and detoxiﬁcation, water puriﬁcation, natural hazard
protection, regulation of air quality, regulation of regional andlocal climate, regulation of erosion, spiritual fulﬁllment, andaesthetic enjoyment. The use of two ecosystem services—captureﬁsheries and fresh water—is now well beyond levels that can besustained even at current demands, much less future ones. At least
one quarter of important commercial ﬁsh stocks are overharvested(high certainty). (See Figures 5, 6, and 7.) From 5% to possibly
25% of global freshwater use exceeds long-term accessible supplies
and is now met either through engineered water transfers or
overdraft of groundwater supplies (low to medium certainty).
Some 15–35% of irrigation withdrawals exceed supply rates andare therefore unsustainable (low to medium certainty). While 15services have been degraded, only 4 have been enhanced in thepast 50 years, three of which involve food production: crops,
livestock, and aquaculture. Terrestrial ecosystems were on
average a net source of CO2 emissions during the nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries, but became a net sink aroundthe middle of the last century, and thus in the last 50 years therole of ecosystems in regulating global climate through carbon
sequestration has also been enhanced.
Actions to increase one ecosystem service often cause thedegradation of other services. [2, 6] For example, because actions
to increase food production typically involve increased use ofwater and fertilizers or expansion of the area of cultivated land,

6 Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i sthese same actions often degrade other ecosystem services, including reducing the availability of water for other uses, degrading
water quality, reducing biodiversity, and decreasing forest cover(which in turn may lead to the loss of forest products and therelease of greenhouse gasses). Similarly, the conversion of forest to
agriculture can signiﬁcantly change the frequency and magnitude
of ﬂoods, although the nature of this impact depends on the characteristics of the local ecosystem and the type of land cover change.
The degradation of ecosystem services often causes signiﬁcant harm to human well-being. [3, 6] The information available to assess the consequences of changes in ecosystem services
for human well-being is relatively limited. Many ecosystem services have not been monitored, and it is also difﬁcult to estimate
the inﬂuence of changes in ecosystem services relative to othersocial, cultural, and economic factors that also affect humanwell-being. Nevertheless, the following types of evidence demonstrate that the harmful effects of the degradation of ecosystemservices on livelihoods, health, and local and national economies
are substantial.
■ Most resource management decisions are most strongly inﬂuenced by ecosystem services entering markets; as a result, the nonmarketed beneﬁts are often lost or degraded. These nonmarketed beneﬁts
are often high and sometimes more valuable than the marketed ones.
For example, one of the most comprehensive studies to date,
which examined the marketed and nonmarketed economic
values associated with forests in eight Mediterranean countries,
found that timber and fuelwood generally accounted for lessthan a third of total economic value of forests in each country.
(See Figure 8.) Values associated with non-wood forest products,
recreation, hunting, watershed protection, carbon sequestration,and passive use (values independent of direct uses) accounted for
between 25% and 96% of the total economic value of the forests.
■ The total economic value associated with managing ecosystems
more sustainably is often higher than the value associated with theconversion of the ecosystem through farming, clear-cut logging, orother intensive uses. Relatively few studies have compared the total
economic value (including values of both marketed and nonmarketed ecosystem services) of ecosystems under alternate management regimes, but some of the studies that do exist have foundthat the beneﬁt of managing the ecosystem more sustainably
exceeded that of converting the ecosystem. (See Figure 9.)■ The economic and public health costs associated with damage toecosystem services can be substantial.
■ The early 1990s collapse of the Newfoundland cod
ﬁshery due to overﬁshing resulted in the loss of tens of
thousands of jobs and cost at least $2 billion in income
support and retraining.
■ In 1996, the cost of U.K. agriculture resulting from thedamage that agricultural practices cause to water (pollution
and eutrophication, a process whereby excessive plant
growth depletes oxygen in the water), air (emissions ofgreenhouse gases), soil (off-site erosion damage, emissions

Table 1. Global Status of Provisioning, Regulating, and Cultural Ecosystem Services Evaluated in the MA
Status indicates whether the condition of the service globally has been enhanced (if the productive capacity of the service has been increased, for example) or degraded in the recent past. Deﬁnitions of “enhanced” and “degraded” are provided in the note below. A fourth category, supporting services, is
not included here as they are not used directly by people.

Service

Sub-category

Status

Notes

crops



substantial production increase

livestock

substantial production increase

capture ﬁsheriesdeclining production due to overharvest

aquaculture

substantial production increase

wild foods

declining production

timber+/–forest loss in some regions, growth in others

cotton, hemp, silk+/–

declining production of some ﬁbers, growth in others

wood fueldeclining production

Genetic resourceslost through extinction and crop genetic resource loss

Biochemicals, natural
medicines, pharmaceuticals

lost through extinction, overharvest

Fresh waterunsustainable use for drinking, industry, and irrigation; amount ofhydro energy unchanged, but dams increase ability to use that energydecline in ability of atmosphere to cleanse itself

global

net source of carbon sequestration since mid-century

regional and local



preponderance of negative impacts

Water regulation+/–

varies depending on ecosystem change and location

Erosion regulation



increased soil degradation

Water puriﬁcation andwaste treatment

declining water quality

Disease regulation+/–

varies depending on ecosystem change

Pest regulation

natural control degraded through pesticide use

Provisioning Services
Food

Fiber

Regulating Services
Air quality regulation
Climate regulation

Pollination

apparent global decline in abundance of pollinators

Natural hazard regulation

loss of natural buffers (wetlands, mangroves)

Spiritual and religious values

rapid decline in sacred groves and species

Aesthetic valuesdecline in quantity and quality of natural lands

Recreation and ecotourism+/–

more areas accessible but many degradedaCultural Services

Note: For provisioning services, we deﬁne enhancement to mean increased production of the service through changes in area over which the service is provided (e.g., spread of
agriculture) or increased production per unit area. We judge the production to be degraded if the current use exceeds sustainable levels. For regulating and supporting services,enhancement refers to a change in the service that leads to greater beneﬁts for people (e.g., the service of disease regulation could be improved by eradication of a vector known totransmit a disease to people). Degradation of regulating and supporting services means a reduction in the beneﬁts obtained from the service, either through a change in the service(e.g., mangrove loss reducing the storm protection beneﬁts of an ecosystem) or through human pressures on the service exceeding its limits (e.g., excessive pollution exceeding thecapability of ecosystems to maintain water quality). For cultural services, enhancement refers to a change in the ecosystem features that increase the cultural (recreational, aesthetic,
spiritual, etc.) beneﬁts provided by the ecosystem.
a

Indicates low to medium certainty. All other trends are medium to high certainty.

Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s 7

Figure 5. Estimated Global Marine Fish Catch,

1950–2001 (C18 Fig 18.3)

In this Figure, the catch reported by governments is in somecases adjusted to correct for likely errors in data.

Figure 7. Trend in Mean Depth of Catch since 1950.

Fisheries catches increasingly originate
from deep areas (Data from C18 Fig 18.5)

0

90
80

– 50

70

–100

60
50

– 150

40
– 200

30
20

– 250

10
– 300

0

Source: Millennium Ecosystem Assessment

Source: Millennium Ecosystem Assessment

Figure 6. Decline in Trophic Level of Fisheries Catch since 1950 (C18)
A trophic level of an organism is its position in a food chain. Levels are numbered according to how far particular organisms are along the chain
from the primary producers at level 1, to herbivores (level 2), to predators (level 3), to carnivores or top carnivores (level 4 or 5). Fish at higher
trophic levels are typically of higher economic value. The decline in the trophic level harvested is largely a result of the overharvest of ﬁsh at higher
trophic levels.

3.6

3.6

3.6

3.5

3.5

3.5

3.4

3.4

3.4

3.3

3.3

3.3

3.2

3.2

3.2

3.1

3.1

3.1

3.0

3.0

3.0

0

0

0

Source: Millennium Ecosystem Assessment

8 Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s

of greenhouse gases), and biodiversity was $2.6 billion, or
9% of average yearly gross farm receipts for the 1990s. Similarly, the damage costs of freshwater eutrophication alone
in England and Wales (involving factors including reduced
value of waterfront dwellings, water treatment costs,
reduced recreational value of water bodies, and tourism
losses) was estimated to be $105–160 million per year in
the 1990s, with an additional $77 million a year being
spent to address those damages.
■ The incidence of diseases of marine organisms and theemergence of new pathogens is increasing, and some ofthese, such as ciguatera, harm human health. Episodes ofharmful (including toxic) algal blooms in coastal waters are
increasing in frequency and intensity, harming other marine
resources such as ﬁsheries as well as human health. In a particularly severe outbreak in Italy in 1989, harmful algal
blooms cost the coastal aquaculture industry $10 million
and the Italian tourism industry $11.4 million.
■ The frequency and impact of ﬂoods and ﬁres has increased
signiﬁcantly in the past 50 years, in part due to ecosystemchanges. Examples are the increased susceptibility of coastal
populations to tropical storms when mangrove forests arecleared and the increase in downstream ﬂooding that followed land use changes in the upper Yangtze River. Annual
economic losses from extreme events increased tenfold fromthe 1950s to approximately $70 billion in 2003, of which
natural catastrophes (ﬂoods, ﬁres, storms, drought, earthquakes) accounted for 84% of insured losses.
■ The impact of the loss of cultural services is particularly difﬁcult
to measure, but it is especially important for many people. Human
cultures, knowledge systems, religions, and social interactions
have been strongly inﬂuenced by ecosystems. A number of theMA sub-global assessments found that spiritual and cultural values of ecosystems were as important as other services for many
local communities, both in developing countries (the importanceof sacred groves of forest in India, for example) and industrial
ones (the importance of urban parks, for instance).
The degradation of ecosystem services represents loss of a capital asset. [3] Both renewable resources such as ecosystem services
and nonrenewable resources such as mineral deposits, some soil
nutrients, and fossil fuels are capital assets. Yet traditional national
accounts do not include measures of resource depletion or of thedegradation of these resources. As a result, a country could cut its
forests and deplete its ﬁsheries, and this would show only as apositive gain in GDP (a measure of current economic well-being)
without registering the corresponding decline in assets (wealth)that is the more appropriate measure of future economic wellbeing. Moreover, many ecosystem services (such as fresh water inaquifers and the use of the atmosphere as a sink for pollutants)
are available freely to those who use them, and so again theirdegradation is not reﬂected in standard economic measures.
When estimates of the economic losses associated with thedepletion of natural assets are factored into measurements of thetotal wealth of nations, they signiﬁcantly change the balance

Figure 8. Annual Flow of Beneﬁts from

Forests in Selected Countries(Adapted from C5 Box 5.2)

In most countries, the marketed values of ecosystems associatedwith timber and fuelwood production are less than one third of thetotal economic value, including nonmarketed values such as carbon
sequestration, watershed protection, and recreation.

Source: Millennium Ecosystem Assessment
200
180
160
140
120
100
80
60
40
20
0
– 20

sheet of countries with economies signiﬁcantly dependent on
natural resources. For example, countries such as Ecuador, Ethiopia, Kazakhstan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Trinidad andTobago, Uzbekistan, and Venezuela that had positive growth innet savings in 2001, reﬂecting a growth in the net wealth of thecountry, actually experienced a loss in net savings when depletionof natural resources (energy and forests) and estimated damages
from carbon emissions (associated with contributions to climatechange) were factored into the accounts.

Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s 9aesthetically pleasing landscape, there is no market
for these services and no one person has an incentive
to pay to maintain the good. And when an action
In each case, the net beneﬁts from the more sustainably managed ecosystem areresults in the degradation of a service that harms
greater than those from the converted ecosystem, even though the private (market)
other individuals, no market mechanism exists (nor,beneﬁts would be greater from the converted ecosystem. (Where ranges of values
in many cases, could it exist) to ensure that the indiare given in the original source, lower estimates are plotted here.)viduals harmed are compensated for the damages
they suffer.
Wealthy populations cannot be insulated fromthe degradation of ecosystem services. [3] Agriculture, ﬁsheries, and forestry once formed the bulk ofnational economies, and the control of natural
resources dominated policy agendas. But whilethese natural resource industries are often still
important, the relative economic and political signiﬁcance of other industries in industrial countries
has grown over the past century as a result of theongoing transition from agricultural to industrial
and service economies, urbanization, and the development of new technologies to increase the production of some services and provide substitutes forothers. Nevertheless, the degradation of ecosystemservices inﬂuences human well-being in industrial
regions and among wealthy populations in developing countries in many ways:■ The physical, economic, or social impacts ofecosystem service degradation may cross boundaries. (See Figure 10.) For example, land degradation
and associated dust storms or ﬁres in one country
can degrade air quality in other countries nearby.
■ Degradation of ecosystem services exacerbates
poverty in developing countries, which can affectneighboring industrial countries by slowing
regional economic growth and contributing to theoutbreak of conﬂicts or the migration of refugees.
■ Changes in ecosystems that contribute togreenhouse gas emissions contribute to global climate changes that affect all countries.
■ Many industries still depend directly on ecosystem services. The collapse of ﬁsheries, for example, has harmed many communities in industrial
countries. Prospects for the forest, agriculture, ﬁshing, and ecotourism industries are all directly tied
Source: Millennium Ecosystem Assessment
to ecosystem services, while other sectors such as
insurance, banking, and health are strongly, if lessdirectly, inﬂuenced by changes in ecosystem services.
■ Wealthy populations of people are insulated from the harmWhile degradation of some services may sometimes be warranted to produce a greater gain in other services, often more
ful effects of some aspects of ecosystem degradation, but not all.
degradation of ecosystem services takes place than is in society’s
For example, substitutes are typically not available when culturalinterests because many of the services degraded are “public
services are lost.
■ Even though the relative economic importance of agriculgoods.” [3] Although people beneﬁt from ecosystem services suchas the regulation of air and water quality or the presence of anture, ﬁsheries, and forestry is declining in industrial countries,
the importance of other ecosystem services such as aesthetic
enjoyment and recreational options is growing.
Figure 9. Economic Beneﬁts under Alternate Management

Practices (C5 Box 5.2)

10 Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i sIt is difﬁcult to assess the implications of ecosystem changes
and to manage ecosystems effectively because many of theeffects are slow to become apparent, because they may be
expressed primarily at some distance from where the ecosystem
was changed, and because the costs and beneﬁts of changes
often accrue to different sets of stakeholders. [7] Substantial
inertia (delay in the response of a system to a disturbance) exists
in ecological systems. As a result, long time lags often occur
between a change in a driver and the time when the full consequences of that change become apparent. For example, phosphorus is accumulating in large quantities in many agricultural soils,
threatening rivers, lakes, and coastal oceans with increased eutrophication. But it may take years or decades for the full impact ofthe phosphorus to become apparent through erosion and otherprocesses. Similarly, it will take centuries for global temperatures
to reach equilibrium with changed concentrations of greenhousegases in the atmosphere and even more time for biological systems
to respond to the changes in climate.
Moreover, some of the impacts of ecosystem changes may be
experienced only at some distance from where the change
occurred. For example, changes in upstream catchments affectwater ﬂow and water quality in downstream regions; similarly,
the loss of an important ﬁsh nursery area in a coastal wetland
may diminish ﬁsh catch some distance away. Both the inertia in
ecological systems and the temporal and spatial separation of
costs and beneﬁts of ecosystem changes often result in situations
where the individuals experiencing harm from ecosystem changes(future generations, say, or downstream landowners) are not thesame as the individuals gaining the beneﬁts. These temporal andspatial patterns make it extremely difﬁcult to fully assess costs
and beneﬁts associated with ecosystem changes or to attributecosts and beneﬁts to different stakeholders. Moreover, the institutional arrangements now in place to manage ecosystems arepoorly designed to cope with these challenges.

■ Disease emergence. If, on average, each infected person infects

at least one other person, then an epidemic spreads, while if theinfection is transferred on average to less than one person, theepidemic dies out. During the 1997–98 El Niño, excessive ﬂooding caused cholera epidemics in Djibouti, Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania, and Mozambique. Warming of the African Great Lakes
due to climate change may create conditions that increase therisk of cholera transmission in the surrounding countries.
■ Eutrophication and hypoxia. Once a threshold of nutrient
loading is achieved, changes in freshwater and coastal ecosystems
can be abrupt and extensive, creating harmful algal blooms(including blooms of toxic species) and sometimes leading to theformation of oxygen-depleted zones, killing most animal life.
Figure 10. Dust Cloud off the Northwest Coastof Africa, March 6, 2004

In this image, the storm covers about one ﬁfth of Earth’s circumference. The dust clouds travel thousands of kilometers and fertilize
the water off the west coast of Florida with iron. This has been linked
to blooms of toxic algae in the region and respiratory problems in
North America and has affected coral reefs in the Caribbean. Degradation of drylands exacerbates problems associated with dust storms.

Increased Likelihood of Nonlinear(Stepped) and Potentially
Abrupt Changes in Ecosystems
There is established but incomplete evidence that changes being
made in ecosystems are increasing the likelihood of nonlinearchanges in ecosystems (including accelerating, abrupt, andpotentially irreversible changes), with important consequences
for human well-being. [7] Changes in ecosystems generally takeplace gradually. Some changes are nonlinear, however: once a
threshold is crossed, the system changes to a very different
state. And these nonlinear changes are sometimes abrupt; they
can also be large in magnitude and difﬁcult, expensive, or
impossible to reverse. Capabilities for predicting some nonlinear changes are improving, but for most ecosystems and formost potential nonlinear changes, while science can often warnof increased risks of change it cannot predict the thresholds
at which the change will be encountered. Examples of largemagnitude nonlinear changes include:

Source: National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Earth Observatory

Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s 11

■ Fisheries collapse. For example, the Atlantic cod stocks off

structure or functioning. In addition, growing pressures fromdrivers such as overharvesting, climate change, invasive species,and nutrient loading push ecosystems toward thresholds that theymight otherwise not encounter.

the east coast of Newfoundland collapsed in 1992, forcing theclosure of the ﬁshery after hundreds of years of exploitation.
(See Figure 11.) Most important, depleted stocks may takeyears to recover, or not recover at all, even if harvesting is signiﬁcantly reduced or eliminated entirely.
Exacerbation of Poverty for Some
■ Species introductions and losses. The introduction of the zebra
Individuals and Groups of People andmussel into aquatic systems in the United States, for instance,
Contribution to Growing Inequities andresulted in the extirpation of native clams in Lake St. Clair andDisparities across Groups of People
annual costs of $100 million to the power industry and other users.
Despite the progress achieved in increasing the production and■ Regional climate change. Deforestation generally leads touse of some ecosystem services, levels of poverty remain high,decreased rainfall. Since forest existence crucially depends on
inequities are growing, and many people still do not have arainfall, the relationship between forest loss and precipitation
sufﬁcient supply of or access to ecosystem services. [3]■ In 2001, 1.1 billion people survived on less than $1 per
decrease can form a positive feedback, which, under certain conditions, can lead to a nonlinear change in forest cover.
day of income, with roughly 70% of them in rural areas where
The growing bushmeat trade poses particularly signiﬁcantthey are highly dependent on agriculture, grazing, and hunting
threats associated with nonlinear changes, in this case acceleratfor subsistence.
ing rates of change. [7] Growth in theuse and trade of bushmeat is placing
Figure 11. Collapse of Atlantic Cod Stocks Off the East Coast
increasing pressure on many species,of Newfoundland in 1992 (CF Box 2.4)
especially in Africa and Asia. While thepopulation size of harvested species may
This collapse forced the closure of the ﬁshery after hundreds of years of exploitation. Until thedecline gradually with increasing harvest
late 1950s, the ﬁshery was exploited by migratory seasonal ﬂeets and resident inshore smallfor some time, once the harvest exceeds
scale ﬁshers. From the late 1950s, offshore bottom trawlers began exploiting the deeper partsustainable levels, the rate of decline ofof the stock, leading to a large catch increase and a strong decline in the underlying biomass.
populations of the harvested species will
Internationally agreed quotas in the early 1970s and, following the declaration by Canada of antend to accelerate. This could place themExclusive Fishing Zone in 1977, national quota systems ultimately failed to arrest and reverse theat risk of extinction and also reduce thedecline. The stock collapsed to extremely low levels in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and afood supply of people dependent on
moratorium on commercial ﬁshing was declared in June 1992. A small commercial inshore ﬁshery
was reintroduced in 1998, but catch rates declined and the ﬁshery was closed indeﬁnitely in 2003.
these resources in the longer term. At thesame time, the bushmeat trade involves
relatively high levels of interaction
between humans and some relatively
900 000
closely related wild animals that areeaten. Again, this increases the risk of a
800 000
nonlinear change, in this case the emergence of new and serious pathogens.
700 000
Given the speed and magnitude of international travel today, new pathogens
600 000
could spread rapidly around the world.
The increased likelihood of these
500 000
nonlinear changes stems from the loss of
biodiversity and growing pressures from
400 000
multiple direct drivers of ecosystemchange. [7] The loss of species and
300 000
genetic diversity decreases the resilienceof ecosystems, which is the level of disturbance that an ecosystem can undergo
200 000
without crossing a threshold to a different
100 000
0

12 Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s

■ Inequality in income and other measures of human well-being has increased over the past decade. A child born in subSaharan Africa is 20 times more likely to die before age 5 than achild born in an industrial country, and this disparity is higher
than it was a decade ago. During the 1990s, 21 countries experienced declines in their rankings in the Human Development
Index (an aggregate measure of economic well-being, health, andeducation); 14 of them were in sub-Saharan Africa.
■ Despite the growth in per capita food production in the past
four decades, an estimated 852 million people were undernourished in 2000–02, up 37 million from the period 1997–99. South
Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, the regions with the largest numbersof undernourished people, are also the regions where growth inper capita food production has lagged the most. Most notably,
per capita food production has declined in sub-Saharan Africa.
■ Some 1.1 billion people still lack access to improved watersupply, and more than 2.6 billion lack access to improved sanitation. Water scarcity affects roughly 1–2 billion people worldwide. Since 1960, the ratio of water use to accessible supply has
grown by 20% per decade.
The degradation of ecosystem services is harming many of
the world’s poorest people and is sometimes the principal factor
causing poverty. [3, 6]■ Half the urban population in Africa, Asia, Latin America,
and the Caribbean suffers from one or more diseases associatedwith inadequate water and sanitation. Worldwide, approximately
1.7 million people die annually as a result of inadequate water,
sanitation, and hygiene.
■ The declining state of capture ﬁsheries is reducing an inexpensive source of protein in developing countries. Per capita ﬁshconsumption in developing countries, excluding China, declined
between 1985 and 1997.
■ Desertiﬁcation affects the livelihoods of millions of people,
including a large portion of the poor in drylands.
The pattern of “winners” and “losers” associated withecosystem changes—and in particular the impact of ecosystemchanges on poor people, women, and indigenous peoples—
has not been adequately taken into account in management
decisions. [3, 6] Changes in ecosystems typically yield beneﬁts
for some people and exact costs on others who may either lose
access to resources or livelihoods or be affected by externalities
associated with the change. For several reasons, groups such as
the poor, women, and indigenous communities have tended tobe harmed by these changes.
■ Many changes in ecosystem management have involved theprivatization of what were formerly common pool resources.
Individuals who depended on those resources (such as indigenous peoples, forest-dependent communities, and other groups
relatively marginalized from political and economic sources ofpower) have often lost rights to the resources.
■ Some of the people and places affected by changes in ecosystems and ecosystem services are highly vulnerable and poorly
equipped to cope with the major changes in ecosystems that may
occur. Highly vulnerable groups include those whose needs forecosystem services already exceed the supply, such as people lacking adequate clean water supplies, and people living in areas withdeclining per capita agricultural production.
■ Signiﬁcant differences between the roles and rights of men
and women in many societies lead to increased vulnerability ofwomen to changes in ecosystem services.
■ The reliance of the rural poor on ecosystem services is rarely
measured and thus typically overlooked in national statistics andpoverty assessments, resulting in inappropriate strategies that do
not take into account the role of the environment in poverty
reduction. For example, a recent study that synthesized data from17 countries found that 22% of household income for ruralcommunities in forested regions comes from sources typically notincluded in national statistics, such as harvesting wild food, fuelwood, fodder, medicinal plants, and timber. These activities generated a much higher proportion of poorer families’ total income
than of wealthy families’, and this income was of particular signiﬁcance in periods of both predictable and unpredictable shortfalls in other livelihood sources.
Development prospects in dryland regions of developing
countries are especially dependent on actions to avoid the degradation of ecosystems and slow or reverse degradation where itis occurring. [3, 5] Dryland systems cover about 41% of Earth’s
land surface and more than 2 billion people inhabit them, morethan 90% of whom are in developing countries. Dryland ecosystems (encompassing both rural and urban regions of drylands)
experienced the highest population growth rate in the 1990s of
any of the systems examined in the MA. (See Figure 12.)
Although drylands are home to about one third of the humanpopulation, they have only 8% of the world’s renewable watersupply. Given the low and variable rainfall, high temperatures,
low soil organic matter, high costs of delivering services such as
electricity or piped water, and limited investment in infrastructure
due to the low population density, people living in drylands face
many challenges. They also tend to have the lowest levels ofhuman well-being, including the lowest per capita GDP and thehighest infant mortality rates.
The combination of high variability in environmental conditions and relatively high levels of poverty leads to situations
where people can be highly vulnerable to changes in ecosystems,
although the presence of these conditions has led to the development of very resilient land management strategies. Pressures ondryland ecosystems already exceed sustainable levels for someecosystem services, such as soil formation and water supply, andare growing. Per capita water availability is currently only two
thirds of the level required for minimum levels of human wellbeing. Approximately 10–20% of the world’s drylands aredegraded (medium certainty) directly harming the people livingin these areas and indirectly harming a larger population throughbiophysical impacts (dust storms, greenhouse gas emissions, andregional climate change) and through socioeconomic impacts

Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s 13

Figure 12. Human Population Growth Rates, 1990–2000, and Per Capita GDP and Biological

Productivity in 2000 in MA Ecological Systems (C.SDM)

MA systems with the lowest net primary productivity and lowest GDP tended to have the highest population growth rates between 1990 and 2000.
Urban, inland water, and marine systems are not included due to the somewhat arbitrary nature of determining net primary productivity of thesystem (urban) or population growth and GDP (freshwater and marine) for them.
Population growth
between 1990 and 2000

Net primary
productivity

Population growth
between 1990 and 2000

20

1.0

20

Gross domestic
product
dollars per capita
20 000

16

0.8

16

16 000

12

0.6

12

12 000

8

0.4

8

8 000

4

0.2

4

4 000

0.0

0

in percentage

0

CultivatedMountainDrylandkg / sq. meter/ year

CoastalIslandForest and woodland

Population growthin percentage

Polar

Net primary productivity

CultivatedMountainDrylandCoastal0IslandForest and woodland

Polar

Gross domestic productSources: Millennium Ecosystem Assessment(human migration and deepening poverty sometimes contributing to conﬂict and instability). Despite these tremendous challenges, people living in drylands and their land management
systems have a proven resilience and the capability of preventing
land degradation, although this can be either undermined orenhanced by public policies and development strategies.
Finding #3: The degradation of ecosystem services could growsigniﬁcantly worse during the ﬁrst half of this century and is abarrier to achieving the Millennium Development Goals.

The MA developed four scenarios to explore plausible futures forecosystems and human well-being. (See Box 1.) The scenarios
explored two global development paths, one in which the world
becomes increasingly globalized and the other in which it becomesincreasingly regionalized, as well as two different approaches toecosystem management, one in which actions are reactive and mostproblems are addressed only after they become obvious and theother in which ecosystem management is proactive and policies
deliberately seek to maintain ecosystem services for the long term.

14 Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s

Most of the direct drivers of change in ecosystems currently
remain constant or are growing in intensity in most ecosystems. (See Figure 13.) In all four MA scenarios, the pressureson ecosystems are projected to continue to grow during theﬁrst half of this century. [4, 5] The most important directdrivers of change in ecosystems are habitat change (land usechange and physical modiﬁcation of rivers or water withdrawal
from rivers), overexploitation, invasive alien species, pollution,and climate change. These direct drivers are often synergistic.
For example, in some locations land use change can result ingreater nutrient loading (if the land is converted to high-intensity
agriculture), increased emissions of greenhouse gases (if forest iscleared), and increased numbers of invasive species (due to the
disturbed habitat).
■ Habitat transformation, particularly from conversion to agriculture: Under the MA scenarios, a further 10–20% of grasslandand forestland is projected to be converted between 2000 and
2050 (primarily to agriculture), as Figure 2 illustrated. The projected land conversion is concentrated in low-income countries
and dryland regions. Forest cover is projected to continue toincrease within industrial countries.

■ Overexploitation, especially overﬁshing: Over much of theworld, the biomass of ﬁsh targeted in ﬁsheries (including that ofboth the target species and those caught incidently) has been
reduced by 90% relative to levels prior to the onset of industrial
ﬁshing, and the ﬁsh being harvested are increasingly comingfrom the less valuable lower trophic levels as populations ofhigher trophic level species are depleted, as shown in Figure 6.
These pressures continue to grow in all the MA scenarios.
■ Invasive alien species: The spread of invasive alien species anddisease organisms continues to increase because of both deliberate translocations and accidental introductions related to growing
trade and travel, with signiﬁcant harmful consequences to native
species and many ecosystem services.
■ Pollution, particularly nutrient loading: Humans have alreadydoubled the ﬂow of reactive nitrogen on the continents, andsome projections suggest that this may increase by roughly afurther two thirds by 2050. (See Figure 14.) Three out of four
MA scenarios project that the global ﬂux of nitrogen to coastal
ecosystems will increase by a further 10–20% by 2030 (medium
certainty), with almost all of this increase occurring in developing
countries. Excessive ﬂows of nitrogen contribute to eutrophication of freshwater and coastal marine ecosystems and acidiﬁcation of freshwater and terrestrial ecosystems (with implications
for biodiversity in these ecosystems). To some degree, nitrogenalso plays a role in creation of ground-level ozone (which leads toloss of agricultural and forest productivity), destruction of ozone
in the stratosphere (which leads to depletion of the ozone layer
and increased UV-B radiation on Earth, causing increased incidence of skin cancer), and climate change. The resulting healtheffects include the consequences of ozone pollution on asthma
and respiratory function, increased allergies and asthma due toincreased pollen production, the risk of blue-baby syndrome,Box 1. MA Scenarios
The MA developed four scenarios to explore
plausible futures for ecosystems and humanwell-being based on different assumptions
about driving forces of change and their
possible interactions:Global Orchestration – This scenario
depicts a globally connected society that
focuses on global trade and economic liberalization and takes a reactive approach to ecosystem problems but that also takes strong
steps to reduce poverty and inequality andto invest in public goods such as infrastructure and education. Economic growth in this
scenario is the highest of the four scenarios,
while it is assumed to have the lowest population in 2050.
Order from Strength – This scenario represents a regionalized and fragmented world,concerned with security and protection,emphasizing primarily regional markets, paying little attention to public goods, and taking
a reactive approach to ecosystem problems.
Economic growth rates are the lowest of the
scenarios (particularly low in developing countries) and decrease with time, while population growth is the highest.
Adapting Mosaic – In this scenario, regional
watershed-scale ecosystems are the focus ofpolitical and economic activity. Local institutions are strengthened and local ecosystemmanagement strategies are common; societies develop a strongly proactive approach tothe management of ecosystems. Economic
growth rates are somewhat low initially but

increase with time, and population in 2050 isnearly as high as in Order from Strength.
TechnoGarden – This scenario depicts a
globally connected world relying strongly
on environmentally sound technology, using
highly managed, often engineered, ecosystems to deliver ecosystem services, and taking a proactive approach to the managementof ecosystems in an effort to avoid problems.
Economic growth is relatively high and accelerates, while population in 2050 is in the midrange of the scenarios.
The scenarios are not predictions; instead
they were developed to explore the unpredictable features of change in drivers and ecosystem services. No scenario representsbusiness as usual, although all begin fromcurrent conditions and trends.
Both quantitative models and qualitative analyses were used to develop the scenarios. For some drivers (such as land usechange and carbon emissions) and ecosystem services (water withdrawals, food production), quantitative projections were calculated using established, peer-reviewed global
models. Other drivers (such as rates of technological change and economic growth), ecosystem services (particularly supporting andcultural services, such as soil formation andrecreational opportunities), and human wellbeing indicators (such as human health andsocial relations) were estimated qualitatively.
In general, the quantitative models used
for these scenarios addressed incremen-tal changes but failed to address thresholds,
risk of extreme events, or impacts of large,
extremely costly, or irreversible changes inecosystem services. These phenomena wereaddressed qualitatively by considering therisks and impacts of large but unpredictableecosystem changes in each scenario.
Three of the scenarios – Global Orchestration, Adapting Mosaic, and TechnoGarden
incorporate signiﬁcant changes in policies
aimed at addressing sustainable development
challenges. In Global Orchestration trade barriers are eliminated, distorting subsidies are
removed, and a major emphasis is placedon eliminating poverty and hunger. In Adapting Mosaic, by 2010, most countries are
spending close to 13% of their GDP on education (as compared to an average of 3.5% in2000), and institutional arrangements to promote transfer of skills and knowledge among
regional groups proliferate. In TechnoGarden
policies are put in place to provide payment
to individuals and companies that provide or
maintain the provision of ecosystem services.
For example, in this scenario, by 2015,
roughly 50% of European agriculture, and
10% of North American agriculture is aimed
at balancing the production of food with the
production of other ecosystem services.
Under this scenario, signiﬁcant advances
occur in the development of environmental
technologies to increase production of services, create substitutes, and reduce harmful trade-offs.

Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s 15

Figure 13. Main Direct Drivers of Change in Biodiversity and Ecosystems (CWG)
The cell color indicates impact of each driver on biodiversity in each type of ecosystem over the past 50–100 years. High impact means that over thelast century the particular driver has signiﬁcantly altered biodiversity in that biome; low impact indicates that it has had little inﬂuence on biodiversity in thebiome. The arrows indicate the trend in the driver. Horizontal arrows indicate a continuation of the current level of impact; diagonal and vertical arrows
indicate progressively increasing trends in impact. Thus, for example, if an ecosystem had experienced a very high impact of a particular driver in the past
century (such as the impact of invasive species on islands), a horizontal arrow indicates that this very high impact is likely to continue. This Figure is basedon expert opinion consistent with and based on the analysis of drivers of change in the various chapters of the assessment report of the MA Condition and
Trends Working Group. The Figure presents global impacts and trends that may be different from those in speciﬁc regions.

HabitatchangeClimatechangeInvasive
species

Overexploitation

Pollution(nitrogen,phosphorus)

BorealForestTemperate
TropicalTemperate grassland
Mediterranean

Dryland

Tropical grasslandand savanna
DesertInland water
CoastalMarineIslandMountain
Polar

Driver’s impact on biodiversity
over the last century

16 Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s

Driver’s current trends

Low

Decreasing impact

Moderate

Continuing impact

High

Increasing impact

Very highVery rapid increaseof the impact

Source: Millennium Ecosystem Assessment

increased risk of cancer and other chronic diseases from nitrates
in drinking water, and increased risk of a variety of pulmonary
and cardiac diseases from the production of ﬁne particles in
the atmosphere.
■ Anthropogenic Climate Change: Observed recent changes inclimate, especially warmer regional temperatures, have alreadyhad signiﬁcant impacts on biodiversity and ecosystems, including
causing changes in species distributions, population sizes, thetiming of reproduction or migration events, and an increase in
the frequency of pest and disease outbreaks. Many coral reefs
have undergone major, although often partially reversible,
bleaching episodes when local sea surface temperatures haveincreased during one month by 0.5–1o Celsius above the averageof the hottest months
By the end of the century, climate change and its impacts may
be the dominant direct driver of biodiversity loss and changes inecosystem services globally. The scenarios developed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change project an increase inglobal mean surface temperature of 2.0–6.4o Celsius above preindustrial levels by 2100, increased incidence of ﬂoods anddroughts, and a rise in sea level of an additional 8–88 centimeters between 1990 and 2100. Harm to biodiversity will growworldwide with increasing rates of change in climate and increasing absolute amounts of change. In contrast, some ecosystem services in some regions may initially be enhanced by projectedchanges in climate (such as increases in temperature or precipitation), and thus these regions may experience net beneﬁts at low
levels of climate change. As climate change becomes more severe,
however, the harmful impacts on ecosystem services outweigh the
beneﬁts in most regions of the world. The balance of scientiﬁc
evidence suggests that there will be a signiﬁcant net harmful
impact on ecosystem services worldwide if global mean surface
temperature increases more than 2o Celsius above preindustrial
levels or at rates greater than 0.2o Celsius per decade (medium
certainty). There is a wide band of uncertainty in the amount ofwarming that would result from any stabilized greenhouse gas
concentration, but based on IPCC projections this would requirean eventual CO2 stabilization level of less than 450 parts per million carbon dioxide (medium certainty).
Under all four MA scenarios, the projected changes in drivers
result in signiﬁcant growth in consumption of ecosystem services, continued loss of biodiversity, and further degradation ofsome ecosystem services. [5]■ During the next 50 years, demand for food crops is projected to grow by 70–85% under the MA scenarios, and demand
for water by between 30% and 85%. Water withdrawals in developing countries are projected to increase signiﬁcantly under the
scenarios, although these are projected to decline in industrial
countries (medium certainty).
■ Food security is not achieved under the MA scenarios by2050, and child malnutrition is not eradicated (and is projected toincrease in some regions in some MA scenarios) despite increasing
food supply and more diversiﬁed diets (medium certainty).

■ A deterioration of the services provided by freshwater

resources (such as aquatic habitat, ﬁsh production, and watersupply for households, industry, and agriculture) is found in the
scenarios, particularly in those that are reactive to environmental
problems (medium certainty).
■ Habitat loss and other ecosystem changes are projected tolead to a decline in local diversity of native species in all four MA
scenarios by 2050 (high certainty). Globally, the equilibrium
number of plant species is projected to be reduced by roughly
10–15% as the result of habitat loss alone over the period of1970 to 2050 in the MA scenarios (low certainty), and otherFigure 14. Global Trends in the Creation of

Reactive Nitrogen on Earth by Human
Activity, with Projection to 2050

(R9 Fig 9.1)

Most of the reactive nitrogen produced by humans comes frommanufacturing nitrogen for synthetic fertilizer and industrial use.
Reactive nitrogen is also created as a by-product of fossil fuelcombustion and by some (nitrogen-ﬁxing) crops and trees inagroecosystems. The range of the natural rate of bacterial nitrogenﬁxation in natural terrestrial ecosystems (excluding ﬁxation inagroecosystems) is shown for comparison. Human activity now
produces approximately as much reactive nitrogen as natural processes
do on the continents. (Note: The 2050 projection is included in theoriginal study and is not based on MA Scenarios.)

300

250

200

150

100

50

0
Source: Millennium Ecosystem Assessment

Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s 17

factors such as overharvesting, invasive species, pollution, andclimate change will further increase the rate of extinction.
The degradation of ecosystem services poses a signiﬁcant barrier to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals
and the MDG targets for 2015. [3] The eight Millennium
Development Goals adopted by the United Nations in 2000 aim
to improve human well-being by reducing poverty, hunger, childand maternal mortality, by ensuring education for all, by controlling and managing diseases, by tackling gender disparity, by
ensuring environmental sustainability, and by pursuing global
partnerships. Under each of the MDGs, countries have agreed totargets to be achieved by 2015. Many of the regions facing thegreatest challenges in achieving these targets coincide with
regions facing the greatest problems of ecosystem degradation.
Although socioeconomic policy changes will play a primary rolein achieving most of the MDGs, many of the targets (and goals)
are unlikely to be achieved without signiﬁcant improvement inmanagement of ecosystems. The role of ecosystem changes in exacerbating poverty (Goal 1, Target 1) for some groups of people has
been described already, and the goal of environmental sustainability, including access to safe drinking water (Goal 7, Targets 9, 10,
and 11), cannot be achieved as long as most ecosystem services arebeing degraded. Progress toward three other MDGs is particularly
dependent on sound ecosystem management:■ Hunger (Goal 1, Target 2): All four MA scenarios projectprogress in the elimination of hunger but at rates far slower thanneeded to attain the internationally agreed target of halving,
between 1990 and 2015, the share of people suffering from hunger. Moreover, the improvements are slowest in the regions inwhich the problems are greatest: South Asia and sub-SaharanAfrica. Ecosystem condition, in particular climate, soil degradation, and water availability, inﬂuences progress toward this goal
through its effect on crop yields as well as through impacts on
the availability of wild sources of food.
■ Child mortality (Goal 4): Undernutrition is the underlying
cause of a substantial proportion of all child deaths. Three of the
MA scenarios project reductions in child undernourishment by
2050 of between 10% and 60% but undernourishment increases
by 10% in Order from Strength (low certainty). Child mortality isalso strongly inﬂuenced by diseases associated with water quality.
Diarrhea is one of the predominant causes of infant deaths worldwide. In sub-Saharan Africa, malaria additionally plays an important part in child mortality in many countries of the region.
■ Disease (Goal 6): In the more promising MA scenarios,
progress toward Goal 6 is achieved, but under Order from
Strength it is plausible that health and social conditions for the
North and South could further diverge, exacerbating healthproblems in many low-income regions. Changes in ecosystems

18 Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i sinﬂuence the abundance of human pathogens such as malaria
and cholera as well as the risk of emergence of new diseases.
Malaria is responsible for 11% of the disease burden in Africa,
and it is estimated that Africa’s GDP could have been $100 billion larger in 2000 (roughly a 25% increase) if malaria had been
eliminated 35 years ago. The prevalence of the following infectious diseases is particularly strongly inﬂuenced by ecosystemchange: malaria, schistosomiasis, lymphatic ﬁlariasis, Japanese
encephalitis, dengue fever, leishmaniasis, Chagas disease, meningitis, cholera, West Nile virus, and Lyme disease.
Finding #4: The challenge of reversing the degradation of
ecosystems while meeting increasing demands for their services can be partially met under some scenarios that the MA
considered, but these involve signiﬁcant changes in policies,
institutions, and practices that are not currently under way.
Many options exist to conserve or enhance speciﬁc ecosystemservices in ways that reduce negative trade-offs or that provide positive synergies with other ecosystem services.

Three of the four MA scenarios show that signiﬁcant changes
in policies, institutions, and practices can mitigate many of thenegative consequences of growing pressures on ecosystems,
although the changes required are large and not currently underway. [5] All provisioning, regulating, and cultural ecosystemservices are projected to be in worse condition in 2050 than they
are today in only one of the four MA scenarios (Order from
Strength). At least one of the three categories of services is in better condition in 2050 than in 2000 in the other three scenarios.
(See Figure 15.) The scale of interventions that result in these
positive outcomes are substantial and include signiﬁcant investments in environmentally sound technology, active adaptive
management, proactive action to address environmental problems before their full consequences are experienced, major investments in public goods (such as education and health), strong
action to reduce socioeconomic disparities and eliminate poverty,
and expanded capacity of people to manage ecosystems adaptively. However, even in scenarios where one or more categories
of ecosystem services improve, biodiversity continues to be lost
and thus the long-term sustainability of actions to mitigate
degradation of ecosystem services is uncertain.
Past actions to slow or reverse the degradation of ecosystems have yielded signiﬁcant beneﬁts, but these improvements have generally not kept pace with growing pressuresand demands. [8] Although most ecosystem services assessed in
the MA are being degraded, the extent of that degradation
would have been much greater without responses implemented
in past decades. For example, more than 100,000 protectedareas (including strictly protected areas such as national parks
as well as areas managed for the sustainable use of natural ecosystems, including timber or wildlife harvest) covering about

Figure 15. Number of Ecosystem Services Enhanced or Degraded by 2050 in the Four MA Scenarios
The Figure shows the net change in the number of ecosystem services enhanced or degraded in the MA scenarios in each category of services forindustrial and developing countries expressed as a percentage of the total number of services evaluated in that category. Thus, 100% degradationmeans that all the services in the category were degraded in 2050 compared with 2000, while 50% improvement could mean that three out of six
services were enhanced and the rest were unchanged or that four out of six were enhanced and one was degraded. The total number of services
evaluated for each category was six provisioning services, nine regulating services, and ﬁve cultural services.
Changes in ecosystem services
in percentage
100

Global Orchestration

Order from Strength

80 Provisioning
IMPROVEMENT

Adapting Mosaic

Regulating Cultural
Provisioning

TechnoGarden
Provisioning
Regulating

60
40
20
0
– 20

DEGRADATION

Cultural

– 40
– 60
– 80

Regulating Cultural– 100

Industrial countries
Provisioning

CulturalDeveloping countries

Regulating

Source: Millennium Ecosystem Assessment

11.7% of the terrestrial surface have now been established, andthese play an important role in the conservation of biodiversity
and ecosystem services (although important gaps in the distribution of protected areas remain, particularly in marine and freshwater systems). Technological advances have also helped lessen
the increase in pressure on ecosystems caused per unit increase indemand for ecosystem services.
Substitutes can be developed for some but not all ecosystemservices, but the cost of substitutes is generally high, and substitutes may also have other negative environmental consequences. [8] For example, the substitution of vinyl, plastics, andmetal for wood has contributed to relatively slow growth inglobal timber consumption in recent years. But while the availability of substitutes can reduce pressure on speciﬁc ecosystemservices, they may not always have positive net beneﬁts on theenvironment. Substitution of fuelwood by fossil fuels, for example, reduces pressure on forests and lowers indoor air pollution
but it also increases net greenhouse gas emissions. Substitutes arealso often costlier to provide than the original ecosystem services.

Ecosystem degradation can rarely be reversed without actions
that address the negative effects or enhance the positive effects
of one or more of the ﬁve indirect drivers of change: population
change (including growth and migration), change in economic
activity (including economic growth, disparities in wealth, andtrade patterns), sociopolitical factors (including factors ranging
from the presence of conﬂict to public participation in decision-making), cultural factors, and technological change. [4]Collectively these factors inﬂuence the level of production andconsumption of ecosystem services and the sustainability of the
production. Both economic growth and population growth leadto increased consumption of ecosystem services, although theharmful environmental impacts of any particular level of consumption depend on the efﬁciency of the technologies used to
produce the service. Too often, actions to slow ecosystem degradation do not address these indirect drivers. For example, forest

Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s 19

management is inﬂuenced more strongly by actions outside theforest sector, such as trade policies and institutions, macroeconomic policies, and policies in other sectors such as agriculture,
infrastructure, energy, and mining, than by those within it.
An effective set of responses to ensure the sustainable management of ecosystems must address the indirect and drivers
just described and must overcome barriers related to [8]:■ Inappropriate institutional and governance arrangements,
including the presence of corruption and weak systems of regulation and accountability.
■ Market failures and the misalignment of economic incentives.
■ Social and behavioral factors, including the lack of politicaland economic power of some groups (such as poor people,
women, and indigenous peoples) that are particularly dependenton ecosystem services or harmed by their degradation.
■ Underinvestment in the development and diffusion of technologies that could increase the efﬁciency of use of ecosystemservices and could reduce the harmful impacts of various driversof ecosystem change.
■ Insufﬁcient knowledge (as well as the poor use of existingknowledge) concerning ecosystem services and management,
policy, technological, behavioral, and institutional responses
that could enhance beneﬁts from these services while conserving resources.
All these barriers are further compounded by weak human andinstitutional capacity related to the assessment and managementof ecosystem services, underinvestment in the regulation andmanagement of their use, lack of public awareness, and lack ofawareness among decision-makers of both the threats posed by
the degradation of ecosystem services and the opportunities that
more sustainable management of ecosystems could provide.
The MA assessed 74 response options for ecosystem services,integrated ecosystem management, conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity, and climate change. Many of these
options hold signiﬁcant promise for overcoming these barriersand conserving or sustainably enhancing the supply of ecosystemservices. Promising options for speciﬁc sectors are shown in Box
2, while cross-cutting responses addressing key obstacles aredescribed in the remainder of this section.

Institutions and Governance
Changes in institutional and environmental governance frameworks are sometimes required to create the enabling conditions
for effective management of ecosystems, while in other cases
existing institutions could meet these needs but face signiﬁcantbarriers. [8] Many existing institutions at both the global and thenational level have the mandate to address the degradation of
ecosystem services but face a variety of challenges in doing so
related in part to the need for greater cooperation across sectors
and the need for coordinated responses at multiple scales.

20 Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i sHowever, since a number of the issues identiﬁed in this assessment are recent concerns and were not speciﬁcally taken into
account in the design of today’s institutions, changes in existing
institutions and the development of new ones may sometimes beneeded, particularly at the national scale.
In particular, existing national and global institutions are notwell designed to deal with the management of common pool
resources, a characteristic of many ecosystem services. Issues ofownership and access to resources, rights to participation indecision-making, and regulation of particular types of resource
use or discharge of wastes can strongly inﬂuence the sustainability of ecosystem management and are fundamental determinantsof who wins and loses from changes in ecosystems. Corruption, amajor obstacle to effective management of ecosystems, also stems
from weak systems of regulation and accountability.
Promising interventions include:■ Integration of ecosystem management goals within other sectors
and within broader development planning frameworks. The mostimportant public policy decisions affecting ecosystems are often
made by agencies and in policy arenas other than those charged
with protecting ecosystems. For example, the Poverty Reduction
Strategies prepared by developing-country governments for theWorld Bank and other institutions strongly shape national
development priorities, but in general these have not taken into
account the importance of ecosystems to improving the basic
human capabilities of the poorest.
■ Increased coordination among multilateral environmental
agreements and between environmental agreements and other international economic and social institutions. International agreements
are indispensable for addressing ecosystem-related concerns thatspan national boundaries, but numerous obstacles weaken theircurrent effectiveness. Steps are now being taken to increase thecoordination among these mechanisms, and this could help tobroaden the focus of the array of instruments. However, coordination is also needed between the multilateral environmental
agreements and more politically powerful international institutions, such as economic and trade agreements, to ensure thatthey are not acting at cross-purposes. And implementation ofthese agreements needs to be coordinated among relevant institutions and sectors at the national level.
■ Increased transparency and accountability of government andprivate-sector performance on decisions that have an impact on
ecosystems, including through greater involvement of concerned
stakeholders in decision-making. Laws, policies, institutions, andmarkets that have been shaped through public participation indecision-making are more likely to be effective and perceived asjust. Stakeholder participation also contributes to the decisionmaking process because it allows a better understanding of
impacts and vulnerability, the distribution of costs and beneﬁts
associated with trade-offs, and the identiﬁcation of a broader
range of response options that are available in a speciﬁc context.
And stakeholder involvement and transparency of decisionmaking can increase accountability and reduce corruption.

Box 2. Examples of Promising and Effective Responses for Speciﬁc Sectors
Illustrative examples of response options
speciﬁc to particular sectors judged to bepromising or effective are listed below. (SeeAppendix B.) A response is considered effective when it enhances the target ecosystemservices and contributes to human well-being
without signiﬁcant harm to other services
or harmful impacts on other groups of people. A response is considered promising if it
does not have a long track record to assess
but appears likely to succeed or if there are
known ways of modifying the response sothat it can become effective.
Agriculture■ Removal of production subsidies that haveadverse economic, social, and environmental effects.
■ Investment in, and diffusion of, agriculturalscience and technology that can sustain thenecessary increase of food supply without
harmful tradeoffs involving excessive use ofwater, nutrients, or pesticides.
■ Use of response polices that recognize therole of women in the production and use offood and that are designed to empower

women and ensure access to and control ofresources necessary for food security.
■ Application of a mix of regulatory andincentive- and market-based mechanisms to
reduce overuse of nutrients.
Fisheries and Aquaculture■ Reduction of marine ﬁshing capacity.
■ Strict regulation of marine ﬁsheries bothregarding the establishment and implementation of quotas and steps to address unreported and unregulated harvest. Individualtransferable quotas may be appropriate insome cases, particularly for cold water,
single species ﬁsheries.
■ Establishment of appropriate regulatory
systems to reduce the detrimental environmental impacts of aquaculture.
■ Establishment of marine protected areas
including ﬂexible no-take zones.
Water■ Payments for ecosystem services provided
by watersheds.
■ Improved allocation of rights to freshwater
resources to align incentives with conservation needs.

Economics and Incentives
Economic and ﬁnancial interventions provide powerful
instruments to regulate the use of ecosystem goods andservices. [8] Because many ecosystem services are not traded inmarkets, markets fail to provide appropriate signals that mightotherwise contribute to the efﬁcient allocation and sustainable
use of the services. A wide range of opportunities exists to inﬂuence human behavior to address this challenge in the form of
economic and ﬁnancial instruments. However, market mechanisms and most economic instruments can only work effectively
if supporting institutions are in place, and thus there is a need tobuild institutional capacity to enable more widespread use of
these mechanisms.
Promising interventions include:■ Elimination of subsidies that promote excessive use of ecosystemservices (and, where possible, transfer of these subsidies to payments
for non-marketed ecosystem services). Government subsidies paid tothe agricultural sectors of OECD countries between 2001 and2003 averaged over $324 billion annually, or one third the global
value of agricultural products in 2000. A signiﬁcant proportionof this total involved production subsidies that led to greater■ Increased transparency of information

regarding water management and improved
representation of marginalized stakeholders.
■ Development of water markets.
■ Increased emphasis on the use of the natural environment and measures other thandams and levees for ﬂood control.
■ Investment in science and technology
to increase the efﬁciency of water use inagriculture.
Forestry■ Integration of agreed sustainable forest
management practices in ﬁnancial institutions, trade rules, global environment programs, and global security decision-making.
■ Empowerment of local communities in support of initiatives for sustainable use of forest products; these initiatives are collectively
more signiﬁcant than efforts led by governments or international processes but require
their support to spread.
■ Reform of forest governance and development of country-led, strategically focusednational forest programs negotiated bystakeholders.

food production in industrial countries than the global market
conditions warranted, promoted overuse of fertilizers and pesticides in those countries, and reduced the proﬁtability of agriculture in developing countries. Many countries outside the OECD
also have inappropriate input and production subsidies, andinappropriate subsidies are common in other sectors such as
water, ﬁsheries, and forestry. Although removal of perverse subsidies will produce net beneﬁts, it will not be without costs. Compensatory mechanisms may be needed for poor people who areadversely affected by the removal of subsidies, and removal of
agricultural subsidies within the OECD would need to beaccompanied by actions designed to minimize adverse impacts
on ecosystem services in developing countries.
■ Greater use of economic instruments and market-based
approaches in the management of ecosystem services. These include:■ Taxes or user fees for activities with “external” costs (tradeoffs not accounted for in the market). Examples include
taxes on excessive application of nutrients or ecotourism
user fees.

Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s 21

Creation of markets, including through cap-and-trade systems. One of the most rapidly growing markets related toecosystem services is the carbon market. Approximately 64
million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent were exchanged
through projects from January to May 2004, nearly as muchas during all of 2003. The value of carbon trades in 2003 wasapproximately $300 million. About one quarter of the trades
involved investment in ecosystem services (hydropower orbiomass). It is speculated that this market may grow to $10
billion to $44 billion by 2010. The creation of a market in
the form of a nutrient trading system may also be a low-cost
way to reduce excessive nutrient loading in the United States.
■ Payment for ecosystem services. For example, in 1996
Costa Rica established a nationwide system of conservation
payments to induce landowners to provide ecosystem services. Under this program, Costa Rica brokers contracts
between international and domestic “buyers” and local“sellers” of sequestered carbon, biodiversity, watershed services, and scenic beauty. Another innovative conservation
ﬁnancing mechanism is “biodiversity offsets,” whereby
developers pay for conservation activities as compensation
for unavoidable harm that a project causes to biodiversity.
■ Mechanisms to enable consumer preferences to be
expressed through markets. For example, current certiﬁcation schemes for sustainable ﬁsheries and forest practices
provide people with the opportunity to promote sustainability through their consumer choices.
■

Social and Behavioral Responses
Social and behavioral responses—including population policy,
public education, civil society actions, and empowerment ofcommunities, women, and youth—can be instrumental in
responding to the problem of ecosystem degradation. [8] These
are generally interventions that stakeholders initiate and execute
through exercising their procedural or democratic rights inefforts to improve ecosystems and human well-being.
Promising interventions include:■ Measures to reduce aggregate consumption of unsustainably
managed ecosystem services. The choices about what individuals
consume and how much are inﬂuenced not just by considerations of price but also by behavioral factors related to culture,ethics, and values. Behavioral changes that could reduce demandfor degraded ecosystem services can be encouraged throughactions by governments (such as education and public awarenessprograms or the promotion of demand-side management),
industry (commitments to use raw materials that are fromsources certiﬁed as being sustainable, for example, or improved
product labeling), and civil society (through raising public awareness). Efforts to reduce aggregate consumption, however, must
sometimes incorporate measures to increase the access to andconsumption of those same ecosystem services by speciﬁc groups
such as poor people.

22 Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s■ Communication and education. Improved communicationand education are essential to achieve the objectives of environmental conventions and the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation as well as the sustainable management of natural resources
more generally. Both the public and decision-makers can beneﬁt
from education concerning ecosystems and human well-being,
but education more generally provides tremendous social beneﬁts
that can help address many drivers of ecosystem degradation.
While the importance of communication and education is wellrecognized, providing the human and ﬁnancial resources toundertake effective work is a continuing problem.
■ Empowerment of groups particularly dependent on ecosystemservices or affected by their degradation, including women, indigenous peoples, and young people. Despite women’s knowledge about
the environment and the potential they possess, their participation in decision-making has often been restricted by economic,
social, and cultural structures. Young people are also key stakeholders in that they will experience the longer-term consequencesof decisions made today concerning ecosystem services. Indigenous control of traditional homelands can sometimes have environmental beneﬁts, although the primary justiﬁcation continues
to be based on human and cultural rights.

Technological Responses
Given the growing demands for ecosystem services and otherincreased pressures on ecosystems, the development and diffusion of technologies designed to increase the efﬁciency of
resource use or reduce the impacts of drivers such as climatechange and nutrient loading are essential. [8] Technologicalchange has been essential for meeting growing demands for someecosystem services, and technology holds considerable promise tohelp meet future growth in demand. Technologies already exist
for reduction of nutrient pollution at reasonable costs—including technologies to reduce point source emissions, changes incrop management practices, and precision farming techniques tohelp control the application of fertilizers to a ﬁeld, for example—
but new policies are needed for these tools to be applied on a sufﬁcient scale to slow and ultimately reverse the increase in nutrient loading (even while increasing nutrient application in regions
such as sub-Saharan Africa where too little fertilizer is being
applied). However, negative impacts on ecosystems and humanwell-being have sometimes resulted from new technologies, andthus careful assessment is needed prior to their introduction.
Promising interventions include:■ Promotion of technologies that enable increased crop yields
without harmful impacts related to water, nutrient, and pesticideuse. Agricultural expansion will continue to be one of the major
drivers of biodiversity loss well into the twenty-ﬁrst century.
Development, assessment, and diffusion of technologies that
could increase the production of food per unit area sustainably
without harmful trade-offs related to excessive consumption ofwater or use of nutrients or pesticides would signiﬁcantly lessenpressure on other ecosystem services.

■ Restoration of ecosystem services. Ecosystem restoration activi-

ties are now common in many countries. Ecosystems with somefeatures of the ones that were present before conversion can often
be established and can provide some of the original ecosystemservices. However, the cost of restoration is generally extremely
high compared with the cost of preventing the degradation of theecosystem. Not all services can be restored, and heavily degraded
services may require considerable time for restoration.
■ Promotion of technologies to increase energy efﬁciency and reducegreenhouse gas emissions. Signiﬁcant reductions in net greenhousegas emissions are technically feasible due to an extensive array oftechnologies in the energy supply, energy demand, and waste
management sectors. Reducing projected emissions will require a
portfolio of energy production technologies ranging from fuelswitching (coal/oil to gas) and increased power plant efﬁciency toincreased use of renewable energy technologies, complemented bymore efﬁcient use of energy in the transportation, buildings, andindustry sectors. It will also involve the development and implementation of supporting institutions and policies to overcome
barriers to the diffusion of these technologies into the marketplace, increased public and private-sector funding for research anddevelopment, and effective technology transfer.

Knowledge Responses
Effective management of ecosystems is constrained both by
the lack of knowledge and information about different aspectsof ecosystems and by the failure to use adequately the information that does exist in support of management decisions.
[8, 9] In most regions, for example, relatively limited information
exists about the status and economic value of most ecosystemservices, and their depletion is rarely tracked in national economic
accounts. Basic global data on the extent and trend in different
types of ecosystems and land use are surprisingly scarce. Models
used to project future environmental and economic conditions
have limited capability of incorporating ecological “feedbacks,”
including nonlinear changes in ecosystems, as well as behavioral
feedbacks such as learning that may take place through adaptive
management of ecosystems.
At the same time, decision-makers do not use all of the relevant information that is available. This is due in part to institutional failures that prevent existing policy-relevant scientiﬁc
information from being made available to decision-makers andin part to the failure to incorporate other forms of knowledge
and information (such as traditional knowledge and practitioners’ knowledge) that are often of considerable value forecosystem management.
Promising interventions include:■ Incorporation of nonmarket values of ecosystems in resource
management and investment decisions. Most resource management
and investment decisions are strongly inﬂuenced by considerations of the monetary costs and beneﬁts of alternative policy
choices. Decisions can be improved if they are informed by the
total economic value of alternative management options andinvolve deliberative mechanisms that bring to bear noneconomic
considerations as well.

Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s 23

■ Use of all relevant forms of knowledge and information inassessments and decision-making, including traditional and practitioners’ knowledge. Effective management of ecosystems typicallyrequires “place-based” knowledge—that is, information about
the speciﬁc characteristics and history of an ecosystem. Traditional knowledge or practitioners’ knowledge held by local
resource managers can often be of considerable value in resource
management, but it is too rarely incorporated into decision-making processes and indeed is often inappropriately dismissed.
■ Enhancing and sustaining human and institutional capacity forassessing the consequences of ecosystem change for human well-being
and acting on such assessments. Greater technical capacity is

24 Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i sneeded for agriculture, forest, and ﬁsheries management. But thecapacity that exists for these sectors, as limited as it is in many
countries, is still vastly greater than the capacity for effective
management of other ecosystem services.
A variety of frameworks and methods can be used to makebetter decisions in the face of uncertainties in data, prediction, context, and scale. Active adaptive management can be aparticularly valuable tool for reducing uncertainty about ecosystem management decisions. [8] Commonly used decisionsupport methods include cost-beneﬁt analysis, risk assessment,
multicriteria analysis, the precautionary principle, and vulnerability analysis. Scenarios also provide one means to cope withmany aspects of uncertainty, but our limited understanding of
ecological systems and human responses shrouds any individual
scenario in its own characteristic uncertainty. Active adaptive
management is a tool that can be particularly valuable given thehigh levels of uncertainty surrounding coupled socioecologicalsystems. This involves the design of management programs totest hypotheses about how components of an ecosystem function and interact, thereby reducing uncertainty about the system more rapidly than would otherwise occur.
Sufﬁcient information exists concerning the drivers ofchange in ecosystems, the consequences of changes in ecosystem services for human well-being, and the merits of various
response options to enhance decision-making in support ofsustainable development at all scales. However, many researchneeds and information gaps were identiﬁed in this assessment,
and actions to address those needs could yield substantial
beneﬁts in the form of improved information for policy andaction. [9] Due to gaps in data and knowledge, this assessment
was unable to answer fully a number of questions posed by its
users. Some of these gaps resulted from weaknesses in monitoring systems related to ecosystem services and their linkages withhuman well-being. In other cases, the assessment revealed signiﬁcant needs for further research, such the need to improveunderstanding of nonlinear changes in ecosystems and of theeconomic value of alternative management options. Investments in improved monitoring and research, combined withadditional assessments of ecosystem services in different nations
and regions, would signiﬁcantly enhance the utility of any
future global assessment of the consequences of ecosystemchange for human well-being.

Key Questionsin the Millennium
Ecosystem Assessment
1. How have ecosystems changed?

26

2. How have ecosystem services and their uses changed?

39

3. How have ecosystem changes affected humanwell-being and poverty alleviation?
4. What are the most critical factors causing ecosystem changes?

49
64

5. How might ecosystems and their services change in the

future under various plausible scenarios?

71

6. What can be learned about the consequences of ecosystemchange for human well-being at sub-global scales?

84

7. What is known about time scales, inertia, and the riskof nonlinear changes in ecosystems?
8. What options exist to manage ecosystems sustainably?

88
92

9. What are the most important uncertainties hindering

decision-making concerning ecosystems?

101

1. How have ecosystems changed?
Ecosystem StructureT

he structure of the world’s ecosystems changed more rapidly in the second half of the twentieth century than at
any time in recorded human history, and virtually all of Earth’s
ecosystems have now been signiﬁcantly transformed throughhuman actions. The most signiﬁcant change in the structure ofecosystems has been the transformation of approximately one
quarter (24%) of Earth’s terrestrial surface to cultivated systems(C26.1.2). (See Box 1.1.) More land was converted to croplandin the 30 years after 1950 than in the 150 years between 1700
and 1850 (C26).
Between 1960 and 2000, reservoir storage capacity quadrupled (C7.2.4); as a result, the amount of water stored behindlarge dams is estimated to be three to six times the amount heldby natural river channels (this excludes natural lakes) (C7.3.2).
(See Figure 1.1.) In countries for which sufﬁcient multiyear data
are available (encompassing more than half of the present-day
mangrove area), approximately 35% of mangroves were lost in
the last two decades (C19.2.1). Roughly 20% of the world’s
coral reefs were lost and an additional 20% degraded in the last

several decades of the twentieth century (C19.2.1). Box 1.1 andTable 1.1 summarize important characteristics and trends in
different ecosystems.
Although the most rapid changes in ecosystems are now taking place in developing countries, industrial countries historicallyexperienced comparable rates of change. Croplands expanded
rapidly in Europe after 1700 and in North America and the former
Soviet Union particularly after 1850 (C26.1.1). Roughly 70% of
the original temperate forests and grasslands and Mediterranean
forests had been lost by 1950, largely through conversion to agriculture (C4.4.3). Historically, deforestation has been much more
intensive in temperate regions than in the tropics, and Europe
is the continent with the smallest fraction of its original forests
remaining (C21.4.2). However, changes prior to the industrial era
seemed to occur at much slower rates than current transformations.
The ecosystems and biomes that have been most signiﬁcantly altered globally by human activity include marine andfreshwater ecosystems, temperate broadleaf forests, temperate(continued on page 32)

Figure 1.1. Time Series of Intercepted Continental Runoff and Large Reservoir Storage,

1900–2000 (C7 Fig 7.8)

The series is taken from a subset of large reservoirs (>0.5 cubic kilometers storage each) totaling about 65% of the global total reservoir storage
for which information was available that allowed the reservoir to be georeferenced to river networks and discharge. The years 1960–2000 haveshown a rapid move toward ﬂow stabilization, which has slowed recently in some parts of the world due to the growing social, economic, andenvironmental concerns surrounding large hydraulic engineering works.

1616
000
000
1414
000
000

5 000
5 000
4 500
4 500
4 000
4 000

1212
000
000
3 500
3 500
1010
000
000
8 000
8 000
6 000
6 000

3 000
3 000
2 500
2 500
2 000
2 000
1 500
1 500

4 000
4 000
1 000
1 000
2 000
2 000
00

500
500
00
Source:Millennium
Ecosystem
Assessment
Source:Millennium
Ecosystem
Assessment

26 Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i sBox 1.1. Characteristics of the World’s Ecological Systems

Source: Millennium Ecosystem Assessment

We report assessment ﬁndings for 10 categories of the land and marine surface, which werefer to as “systems”: forest, cultivated, dryland, coastal, marine, urban, polar, inland water,
island, and mountain. Each category contains a
number of ecosystems. However, ecosystems
within each category share a suite of biological,
climatic, and social factors that tend to be similar within categories and differ across categories. The MA reporting categories are not spatially exclusive; their areas often overlap. For
example, transition zones between forest andcultivated lands are included in both the forest
system and cultivated system reporting categories. These reporting categories were selected
because they correspond to the regions ofresponsibility of different government ministries(such as agriculture, water, forestry, and soforth) and because they are the categories usedwithin the Convention on Biological Diversity.
Marine, Coastal, and Island Systems■ Marine systems are the world’s oceans. For
mapping purposes, the map shows ocean areas
where the depth is greater than 50 meters.
Global ﬁshery catches from marine systems
peaked in the late 1980s and are now declining
despite increasing ﬁshing effort (C18.ES).

■ Coastal systems refer to the interface

between ocean and land, extending seawards
to about the middle of the continental shelfand inland to include all areas strongly inﬂuenced by proximity to the ocean. The map
shows the area between 50 meters below
mean sea level and 50 meters above thehigh tide level or extending landward to a distance 100 kilometers from shore. Coastal
systems include coral reefs, intertidal zones,
estuaries, coastal aquaculture, and seagrass
communities. Nearly half of the world’s major
cities (having more than 500,000 people) arelocated within 50 kilometers of the coast,and coastal population densities are 2.6
times larger than the density of inland areas.
By all commonly used measures, the humanwell-being of coastal inhabitants is on average much higher than that of inland communities (C19.3.1).
■ Islands are lands (both continental andoceanic) isolated by surrounding water andwith a high proportion of coast to hinterland. For mapping purposes, the MA uses
the ESRI ArcWorld Country Boundary dataset, which contains nearly 12,000 islands.
Islands smaller than 1.5 hectares are notmapped or included in the statistics. The

largest island included is Greenland. The
map includes islands within 2 kilometersof the mainland (e.g., Long Island in the
United States), but the statistics provided forisland systems in this report exclude theseislands. Island states, together with their
exclusive economic zones, cover 40% of
the world’s oceans (C23.ES). Island systems
are especially sensitive to disturbances, andthe majority of recorded extinctions haveoccurred on island systems, although thispattern is changing, and over the past 20
years as many extinctions have occurredon continents as on islands (C4.ES).
Urban, Dryland, and Polar Systems■ Urban systems are built environments witha high human density. For mapping purposes,
the MA uses known human settlements with apopulation of 5,000 or more, with boundaries
delineated by observing persistent night-timelights or by inferring areal extent in the cases
where such observations are absent. The
world’s urban population increased from about
200 million in 1900 to 2.9 billion in 2000,
and the number of cities with populations inexcess of 1 million increased from 17 in 1900
to 388 in 2000 (C27.ES).

(continued on page 28)
Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s 27

Box 1.1. Characteristics of the World’s Ecological Systems (continued)

Source: Millennium Ecosystem Assessment

Source: Millennium Ecosystem Assessment

28 Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s■ Dryland systems are lands where plant pro-duction is limited by water availability; thedominant human uses are large mammal herbivory, including livestock grazing, and cultivation. The map shows drylands as deﬁned
by the U.N. Convention to Combat Desertiﬁcation, namely lands where annual precipitation is less than two thirds of potential evapotranspiration—from dry subhumid areas (ratio
ranges 0.50–0.65) through semiarid, arid,
and hyperarid (ratio <0.05), but excluding
polar areas. Drylands include cultivated lands,
scrublands, shrublands, grasslands, savannas, semi-deserts, and true deserts. Dryland
systems cover about 41% of Earth’s land surface and are inhabited by more than 2 billion
people (about one third of the total population) (C22.ES). Croplands cover approximately
25% of drylands (C22 Table 22.2), and dryland
rangelands support approximately 50% of theworld’s livestock (C22). The current socioeconomic condition of people in dryland systems,of which about 90% are in developing countries, is worse than in other areas. Fresh water
availability in drylands is projected to be further
reduced from the current average of 1,300
cubic meters per person per year in 2000,

which is already below the threshold of 2,000
cubic meters required for minimum human wellbeing and sustainable development (C22.ES).
Approximately 10–20% of the world’s drylands
are degraded (medium certainty) (C22.ES).
■ Polar systems are high-latitude systems frozen for most of the year, including ice caps,
areas underlain by permafrost, tundra, polar
deserts, and polar coastal areas. Polar systems do not include high-altitude cold systems
in low latitudes. Temperature in polar systems is
on average warmer now than at any time in thelast 400 years, resulting in widespread thaw of
permafrost and reduction of sea ice (C25.ES).
Most changes in feedback processes that occur
in polar regions magnify trace gas–induced
global warming trends and reduce the capacityof polar regions to act as a cooling system for
Earth (C25.ES). Tundra constitutes the largest
natural wetland in the world (C25.1).
Forest Systems■ Forest systems are lands dominated bytrees; they are often used for timber, fuelwood, and non-wood forest products. The
map shows areas with a canopy cover ofat least 40% by woody plants taller than 5

meters. Forests include temporarily cut-overforests and plantations but exclude orchards
and agroforests where the main products arefood crops. The global area of forest systems has been reduced by one half over the
past three centuries. Forests have effectively
disappeared in 25 countries, and another 29
have lost more than 90% of their forest cover(C21.ES). Forest systems are associatedwith the regulation of 57% of total water runoff. About 4.6 billion people depend for all orsome of their water on supplies from forest
systems (C7 Table 7.2). From 1990 to 2000,
the global area of temperate forest increasedby almost 3 million hectares per year, while
deforestation in the tropics occured at an
average rate exceeding 12 million hectares
per year over the past two decades (C.SDM).
Cultivated Systems■ Cultivated systems are lands dominated bydomesticated species and used for and substantially changed by crop, agroforestry, or
aquaculture production. The map shows areasin which at least 30% by area of the landscapecomes under cultivation in any particular year.
Cultivated systems, including croplands,

Source: Millennium Ecosystem Assessment(continued on page 30)
Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s 29

Box 1.1. Characteristics of the World’s Ecological Systems (continued)
shifting cultivation, conﬁned livestock production, and freshwater aquaculture, cover
approximately 24% of total land area. In
the last two decades, the major areas ofcropland expansion were located in Southeast Asia, parts of South Asia, the Great
Lakes region of eastern Africa, the Amazon
Basin, and the U.S. Great Plains. The major
decreases of cropland occurred in the southeastern United States, eastern China, andparts of Brazil and Argentina (C26.1.1). Mostof the increase in food demand of the past
50 years has been met by intensiﬁcation ofcrop, livestock, and aquaculture systems
rather than expansion of production area. In
developing countries, over the period 1961–
99 expansion of harvested land contributed only 29% to growth in crop production,although in sub-Saharan Africa expansion
accounted for two thirds of growth inproduction (C26.1.1). Increased yields ofcrop production systems have reduced thepressure to convert natural ecosystems into
cropland, but intensiﬁcation has increased
pressure on inland water ecosystems, generally reduced biodiversity within agriculturallandscapes, and it requires higher energy
inputs in the form of mechanization and the
production of chemical fertilizers. Cultivatedsystems provide only 16% of global runoff, although their close proximity to humans
means that about 5 billion people depend forall or some of their water on supplies from
cultivated systems (C7 Table 7.2). Such proximity is associated with nutrient and industrial
water pollution.
Inland Water and Mountain Systems■ Inland water systems are permanent water
bodies inland from the coastal zone andareas whose properties and use are dominated by the permanent, seasonal, or intermittent occurrence of ﬂooded conditions. Inland
waters include rivers, lakes, ﬂoodplains, reservoirs, wetlands, and inland saline systems.
(Note that the wetlands deﬁnition used by the
Ramsar Convention includes the MA inland
water and coastal system categories.) The biodiversity of inland waters appears to be in aworse condition than that of any other system,
driven by declines in both the area of wetlands
and the water quality in inland waters (C4 andC20). It is speculated that 50% of inland waterarea (excluding large lakes) has been lost globally (C20.ES). Dams and other infrastructure
fragment 60% of the large river systems in theworld (C20.4.2).
■ Mountain systems are steep and highlands. The map is based on elevation and, atlower elevations, a combination of elevation,slope, and local topography. Some 20% (or1.2 billion) of the world’s people live in mountains or at their edges, and half of humankind
depends, directly or indirectly, on mountain
resources (largely water) (C24.ES). Nearly
all—90%—of the 1.2 billion people in mountains live in countries with developing or transition economies. In these countries, 7% of
the total mountain area is currently classiﬁed as cropland, and people are often highly
dependent on local agriculture or livestock
production (C24.3.2). About 4 billion people
depend for all or some of their water on supplies from mountain systems. Some 90 million mountain people—almost all those living
above 2,500 meters—live in poverty and areconsidered especially vulnerable to food insecurity (C24.1.4).

Source: Millennium Ecosystem Assessment

30 Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i sTable 1.1. Comparative Table of Systems as Reported by the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (C.SDM)
Note that as described in Box 1.1, the boundaries of these systems often overlap. Statistics for different systems can therefore be comparedbut cannot be totaled across systems, as this would result in partial double-counting.
Areaa
Share of(million sq. Terrestrial
km.)
Surface ofEarth(percent)

System andSubsystem

Population
Density(people persq. km.)Urban Rural

GrowthRate(percent
1990–
2000)

GDP
per
Capita(dollars)

InfantMean
Share of
NPP
SystemMortality
Rateb
(kg.
Covered by
PAsc(deaths carbon per(percent)
per 1,000 sq. meter
live births) per year)

Shareof AreaTransformedd(percent)

Marine

349.3

68.6e

–

–

–

–

–

0.15

0.3

–

Coastal

17.2

4.1

1,105

70

15.9

8,960

41.5

–

7

–

Terrestrial

6.0

4.1

1,105

70

15.9

8,960

41.5

0.52

4

11

Marine

11.2

2.2e

–

–

–

–

–

0.14

9

–

Inland water

10.3

7.0

817

26

17.0

7,300

57.6

0.36

12

11

Forest/woodland

41.9

28.4

472

18

13.5

9,580

57.7

0.68

10

42

Tropical/sub-tropical

23.3

15.8

565

14

17.0

6,854

58.3

0.95

11

34

Temperate

6.2

4.2

320

7

4.4

17,109

12.5

0.45

16

67

Boreal

12.4

8.4

114

0.1

–3.7

13,142

16.5

0.29

4

25

Dryland

f

59.9

40.6

750

20

18.5

4,930

66.6

0.26

7

18

Hyperarid

9.6

6.5

1,061

1

26.2

5,930

41.3

0.01

11

1

Arid

15.3

10.4

568

3

28.1

4,680

74.2

0.12

6

5

Semiarid

22.3

15.3

643

10

20.6

5,580

72.4

0.34

6

25

Dry subhumid

12.7

8.6

711

25

13.6

4,270

60.7

0.49

7

35

7.1

4.8

1,020

37

12.3

11,570

30.4

0.54

17

17

4.7

3.2

918

14

12.5

11,148

30.6

0.45

18

21

IslandIsland states
Mountain

35.8

24.3

63

3

16.3

6,470

57.9

0.42

14

12

300–1,000m

13.0

8.8

58

3

12.7

7,815

48.2

0.47

11

13

1,000–2,500m

11.3

7.7

69

3

20.0

5,080

67.0

0.45

14

13

2,500–4,500m

9.6

6.5

90

2

24.2

4,144

65.0

0.28

18

6

> 4,500m

1.8

1.2

104

0

25.3

3,663

39.4

0.06

22

0.3

Polar

23.0

15.6

161g 0.06g–6.5

15,401

12.8

0.06

42g

0.3g

Cultivated

35.3

23.9

786

70

14.1

6,810

54.3

0.52

6

47

Pasture

0.1

0.1

419

10

28.8

15,790

32.8

0.64

4

11

Cropland

8.3

5.7

1,014

118

15.6

4,430

55.3

0.49

4

62

Mixed
(crop and other)

26.9

18.2

575

22

11.8

11,060

46.5

0.6

6

43

Urban

3.6

2.4

681

–

12.7

12,057

36.5

0.47

0

100

GLOBAL

510

–

681

13

16.7

7,309

57.4

–

4

38

Area estimates based on GLC2000 dataset for the year 2000 except for cultivated systems where area is based on GLCCD v2 dataset for the years 1992–1993 (C26 Box1).
Deaths of children less than one year old per 1,000 live births.
cIncludes only natural protected areas in IUCN categories I to VI.
dFor all systems except forest/woodland, area transformed is calculated from land depicted as cultivated or urban areas by GLC2000 land cover data set. The area transformed
for forest/woodland systems is calculated as the percentage change in area between potential vegetation (forest biomes of the WWF ecoregions) and current forest/woodlandareas in GLC2000. Note: 22 percent of the forest/woodland system falls outside forest biomes and is therefore not included in this analysis.
ePercent of total surface of Earth.
fPopulation density, growth rate, GDP per capita, and growth rate for the inland water system have been calculated with an area buffer of 10 kilometers.
gExcluding Antarctica.
ab

Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s 31

grasslands, Mediterranean forests, and tropical dry forests. (See Figure 1.2 and C18, C20.)
Within marine systems, the world’s demand
for food and animal feed over the last 50 years
has resulted in ﬁshing pressure so strong thatthe biomass of both targeted species and thosecaught incidentally (the “bycatch”) has been
reduced in much of the world to one tenthof the levels prior to the onset of industrial
ﬁshing (C18.ES). Globally, the degradationof ﬁsheries is also reﬂected in the fact that theﬁsh being harvested are increasingly comingfrom the less valuable lower trophic levels as
populations of higher trophic level species are
depleted. (See Figure 1.3.)
Freshwater ecosystems have been modiﬁed
through the creation of dams and throughthe withdrawal of water for human use. The
construction of dams and other structures
along rivers has moderately or strongly
affected ﬂows in 60% of the large river systems in the world (C20.4.2). Water removal
for human uses has reduced the ﬂow ofseveral major rivers, including the Nile, Yellow, and Colorado Rivers, to the extent thatthey do not always ﬂow to the sea. As waterﬂows have declined, so have sediment ﬂows,
which are the source of nutrients important
for the maintenance of estuaries. Worldwide,
although human activities have increased
sediment ﬂows in rivers by about 20%, reservoirs and water diversions prevent about 30%of sediments from reaching the oceans, resulting in a net reduction of sediment delivery toestuaries of roughly 10% (C19.ES).
Within terrestrial ecosystems, more than
two thirds of the area of 2 of the world’s 14
major terrestrial biomes (temperate grasslands and Mediterranean forests) and morethan half of the area of 4 other biomes (tropical dry forests, temperate broadleaf forests,
tropical grassland, and ﬂooded grasslands)
had been converted (primarily to agriculture)by 1990, as Figure 1.3 indicated. Among the
major biomes, only tundra and boreal forests
show negligible levels of loss and conversion,
although they have begun to be affected byclimate change.
Globally, the rate of conversion of ecosystems has begun to slow largely due to reductions in the rate of expansion of cultivatedland, and in some regions (particularly in

32 Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i sFigure 1.2. Conversion of Terrestrial Biomesa(Adapted from C4, S10)

It is not possible to estimate accurately the extent of different biomes prior tosigniﬁcant human impact, but it is possible to determine the “potential” area of biomes
based on soil and climatic conditions. This Figure shows how much of that potential
area is estimated to have been converted by 1950 (medium certainty), how much
was converted between 1950 and 1990 (medium certainty), and how much would
be converted under the four MA scenarios (low certainty) between 1990 and 2050.
Mangroves are not included here because the area was too small to be accurately
assessed. Most of the conversion of these biomes is to cultivated systems.

temperate zones) ecosystems are returning to conditions andspecies compositions similar to their pre-conversion states. Yet
rates of ecosystem conversion remain high or are increasing forspeciﬁc ecosystems and regions. Under the aegis of the MA, theﬁrst systematic examination of the status and trends in terrestrial
and coastal land cover was carried out using global and regional
datasets. The pattern of deforestation, afforestation, and dryland
degradation between 1980 and 2000 is shown in Figure 1.4.
Opportunities for further expansion of cultivation are diminishing in many regions of the world as most of the land well-suitedfor intensive agriculture has been converted to cultivation (C26.
ES). Increased agricultural productivity is also diminishing theneed for agricultural expansion.
As a result of these two factors, a greater fraction of land incultivated systems (areas with at least 30% of land cultivated) is
actually being cultivated, the intensity of cultivation of land isincreasing, fallow lengths are decreasing, and management practices are shifting from monocultures to polycultures. Since 1950,
cropland areas have stabilized in North America and decreasedin Europe and China (C26.1.1). Cropland areas in the Former
Soviet Union have decreased since 1960 (C26.1.1). Within temperate and boreal zones, forest cover increased by approximately
2.9 million hectares per year in the 1990s, of which approximately 40% was forest plantations (C21.4.2). In some cases, rates
of conversion of ecosystems have apparently slowed because mostof the ecosystem has now been converted, as is the case with temperate broadleaf forests and Mediterranean forests (C4.4.3)

Ecosystem Processes
Ecosystem processes, including water, nitrogen, carbon, andphosphorus cycling, changed more rapidly in the second half ofthe twentieth century than at any time in recorded human history. Human modiﬁcations of ecosystems have changed not only
the structure of the systems (such as what habitats or species arepresent in a particular location), but their processes and functioning as well. The capacity of ecosystems to provide services
derives directly from the operation of natural biogeochemical
cycles that in some cases have been signiﬁcantly modiﬁed.
■ Water Cycle: Water withdrawals from rivers and lakes for irrigation or for urban or industrial use doubled between 1960 and2000 (C7.2.4). (Worldwide, 70% of water use is for agriculture(C7.2.2).) Large reservoir construction has doubled or tripled theresidence time of river water—the average time, that is, that adrop of water takes to reach the sea (C7.3.2). Globally, humans
use slightly more than 10% of the available renewable freshwatersupply through household, agricultural, and industrial activities(C7.2.3), although in some regions such as the Middle East andNorth Africa, humans use 120% of renewable supplies (theexcess is obtained through the use of groundwater supplies at
rates greater than their rate of recharge) (C7.2.2).
■ Carbon Cycle: Since 1750, the atmospheric concentration ofcarbon dioxide has increased by about 34% (from about 280
parts per million to 376 parts per million in 2003) (S7.3.1).
Approximately 60% of that increase (60 parts per million) has
taken place since 1959. The effect of changes in terrestrial

Figure 1.3. Decline in Trophic Level of Fisheries Catch since 1950 (C18)
A trophic level of an organism is its position in a food chain. Levels are numbered according to how far particular organisms are along the chain fromthe primary producers at level 1, to herbivores (level 2), to predators (level 3), to carnivores or top carnivores (level 4 or 5). Fish at higher trophic levels
are typically of higher economic value. The decline in the trophic level harvested is largely a result of the overharvest of ﬁsh at higher trophic levels.

3.6

3.6

3.6

3.5

3.5

3.5

3.4

3.4

3.4

3.3

3.3

3.3

3.2

3.2

3.2

3.1

3.1

3.1

3.0

3.0

3.0

0

0

0

Source: Millennium Ecosystem Assessment

Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s 33

Figure 1.4. Locations Reported by Various Studies as Undergoing High Rates of Land CoverChange in the Past Few Decades (C.SDM)

In the case of forest cover change, the studies refer to the period 1980–2000 and are based on national statistics, remote sensing, and to alimited degree expert opinion. In the case of land cover change resulting from degradation in drylands (desertiﬁcation), the period is unspeciﬁed
but inferred to be within the last half-century, and the major study was entirely based on expert opinion, with associated low certainty. Change incultivated area is not shown.

Source: Millennium Ecosystem Assessment

ecosystems on the carbon cycle reversed during the last 50 years.
Those ecosystems were on average a net source of CO2 during
the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (primarily due
to deforestation, but with contributions from degradation ofagricultural, pasture, and forestlands) and became a net sinksometime around the middle of the last century (although carbon losses from land use change continue at high levels) (highcertainty). Factors contributing to the growth of the role ofecosystems in carbon sequestration include afforestation, reforestation, and forest management in North America, Europe,
China, and other regions; changed agriculture practices; and thefertilizing effects of nitrogen deposition and increasing atmospheric CO2 (high certainty) (C13.ES).
■ Nitrogen Cycle: The total amount of reactive, or biologicallyavailable, nitrogen created by human activities increased ninefold
between 1890 and 1990, with most of that increase taking placein the second half of the century in association with increased useof fertilizers (S7.3.2). (See Figures 1.5 and 1.6.) A recent study of
global human contributions to reactive nitrogen ﬂows projectedthat ﬂows will increase from approximately 165 teragrams of34 Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i sreactive nitrogen in 1999 to 270 teragrams in 2050, an increaseof 64% (R9 Fig 9.1). More than half of all the synthetic nitrogen
fertilizer (which was ﬁrst produced in 1913) ever used on theplanet has been used since 1985 (R9.2). Human activities have
now roughly doubled the rate of creation of reactive nitrogen on
the land surfaces of Earth (R9.2). The ﬂux of reactive nitrogen to
the oceans increased by nearly 80% from 1860 to 1990, fromroughly 27 teragrams of nitrogen per year to 48 teragrams in1990 (R9). (This change is not uniform over Earth, however, andwhile some regions such as Labrador and Hudson’s Bay in Canada have seen little if any change, the ﬂuxes from more developed
regions such as the northeastern United States, the watersheds of
the North Sea in Europe, and the Yellow River basin in China
have increased ten- to ﬁfteenfold.)■ Phosphorus Cycle: The use of phosphorus fertilizers and therate of phosphorus accumulation in agricultural soils increased
nearly threefold between 1960 and 1990, although the rate has
declined somewhat since that time (S7 Fig 7.18). The current
ﬂux of phosphorus to the oceans is now triple that of background rates (approximately 22 teragrams of phosphorus per
year versus the natural ﬂux of 8 teragrams) (R9.2)

Figure 1.5. Global Trends in the Creation of

Reactive Nitrogen on Earth by Human
Activity, with Projection to 2050

(R9 Fig 9.1)

Most of the reactive nitrogen produced by humans comes frommanufacturing nitrogen for synthetic fertilizer and industrial use.
Reactive nitrogen is also created as a by-product of fossil fuelcombustion and by some (nitrogen-ﬁxing) crops and trees inagroecosystems. The range of the natural rate of bacterial nitrogenﬁxation in natural terrestrial ecosystems (excluding ﬁxation inagroecosystems) is shown for comparison. Human activity now
produces approximately as much reactive nitrogen as naturalprocesses do on the continents. (Note: The 2050 projection is
included in the original study and is not based on MA Scenarios.)

300

250

200

150

100

50

0
Source: Millennium Ecosystem Assessment

Species
A change in an ecosystem necessarily affects the species in thesystem, and changes in species affect ecosystem processes.
The distribution of species on Earth is becoming morehomogenous. By homogenous, we mean that the differences
between the set of species at one location on the planet and theset at another location are, on average, diminishing. The naturalprocess of evolution, and particularly the combination of natural barriers to migration and local adaptation of species, led tosigniﬁcant differences in the types of species in ecosystems in
different regions. But these regional differences in the planet’s
biota are now being diminished.

Two factors are responsible for this trend. First, the extinctionof species or the loss of populations results in the loss of the presence of species that had been unique to particular regions. Second, the rate of invasion or introduction of species into newranges is already high and continues to accelerate apace withgrowing trade and faster transportation. (See Figure 1.7.) For
example, a high proportion of the roughly 100 non-native
species in the Baltic Sea are native to the North American Great
Lakes, and 75% of the recent arrivals of about 170 non-native
species in the Great Lakes are native to the Baltic Sea (S10.5).
When species decline or go extinct as a result of human activities,
they are replaced by a much smaller number of expanding species
that thrive in human-altered environments. One effect is that insome regions where diversity has been low, the biotic diversity
may actually increase—a result of invasions of non-native forms.
(This is true in continental areas such as the Netherlands as wellas on oceanic islands.)
Across a range of taxonomic groups, either the population
size or range or both of the majority of species is currently
declining. Studies of amphibians globally, African mammals,
birds in agricultural lands, British butterﬂies, Caribbean corals,
and ﬁshery species show the majority of species to be declining in
range or number. Exceptions include species that have been protected in reserves, that have had their particular threats (such as
overexploitation) eliminated, or that tend to thrive in landscapesthat have been modiﬁed by human activity (C4.ES).
Between 10% and 30% of mammal, bird, and amphibian
species are currently threatened with extinction (medium tohigh certainty), based on IUCN–World Conservation Union
criteria for threats of extinction. As of 2004, comprehensive
assessments of every species within major taxonomic groups havebeen completed for only three groups of animals (mammals,
birds, and amphibians) and two plant groups (conifers and cycads,
a group of evergreen palm-like plants). Specialists on thesegroups have categorized species as “threatened with extinction” ifthey meet a set of quantitative criteria involving their population
size, the size of area in which they are found, and trends in population size or area. (Under the widely used IUCN criteria forextinction, the vast majority of species categorized as “threatenedwith extinction” have approximately a 10% chance of going
extinct within 100 years, although some long-lived species will
persist much longer even though their small population size andlack of recruitment means that they have a very high likelihoodof extinction.) Twelve percent of bird species, 23% of mammals,and 25% of conifers are currently threatened with extinction;
32% of amphibians are threatened with extinction, but information is more limited and this may be an underestimate. Higher
levels of threat have been found in the cycads, where 52% arethreatened (C4.ES). In general, freshwater habitats tend to havethe highest proportion of threatened species (C4.5.2).

Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s 35

Figure 1.6. Estimated Total Reactive Nitrogen Deposition from theAtmosphere (Wet and Dry) in 1860, Early 1990s, and Projected
for 2050 (milligrams of nitrogen per square meter per year) (R9 Fig 9.2)

Atmospheric deposition
currently accounts for roughly
12% of the reactive nitrogenentering terrestrial andcoastal marine ecosystems
globally, although in someregions, atmosphericdeposition accounts for ahigher percentage (about 33%
in the United States). (Note:the projection was included in
the original study and is notbased on MA scenarios.)

36 Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i sOver the past few hundred years,
humans have increased the species
extinction rate by as much as 1,000
times background rates typical over theplanet’s history (medium certainty)(C4.ES, C4.4.2.). (See Figure 1.8.)
Extinction is a natural part of Earth’s
history. Most estimates of the total
number of species today lie between 5
million and 30 million, although theoverall total could be higher than 30
million if poorly known groups such as
deep-sea organisms, fungi, and microorganisms including parasites have more
species than currently estimated. Species
present today only represent 2–4% of all
species that have ever lived. The fossil
record appears to be punctuated by ﬁve
major mass extinctions, the most recentof which occurred 65 million years ago.
The average rate of extinction foundfor marine and mammal fossil species(excluding extinctions that occurred in
the ﬁve major mass extinctions) isapproximately 0.1–1 extinctions per
million species per year. There areapproximately 100 documented extinctions of birds, mammal, and amphibians over the past 100 years, a rate
50–500 times higher than backgroundrates. Including possibly extinct species, the rate is more than 1,000 times
higher than background rates.
Although the data and techniques used
to estimate current extinction rates
have improved over the past two
decades, signiﬁcant uncertainty still
exists in measuring current rates ofextinction because the extent of extinctions of undescribed taxa is unknown,
the status of many described species ispoorly known, it is difﬁcult to document the ﬁnal disappearance of veryrare species, and there are time lags
between the impact of a threatening
process and the resulting extinction.

GenesGenetic diversity has declined globally,
particularly among cultivated species. The
extinction of species and loss of uniquepopulations has resulted in the loss of uniquegenetic diversity contained by those species
and populations. For wild species, there are few
data on the actual changes in the magnitude
and distribution of genetic diversity (C4.4),
although studies have documented declining
genetic diversity in wild species that have beenheavily exploited. In cultivated systems, since1960 there has been a fundamental shift in thepattern of intra-species diversity in farmers’ ﬁelds
and farming systems as the crop varieties planted
by farmers have shifted from locally adaptedand developed populations (landraces) to more
widely adapted varieties produced throughformal breeding systems (modern varieties).
Roughly 80% of wheat area in developing
countries and three quarters of the rice area in
Asia is planted with modern varieties (C26.2.1).
(For other crops, such as maize, sorghum andmillet, the proportion of area planted to modern
varieties is far smaller.) The on-farm losses ofgenetic diversity of crops and livestock have been
partially offset by the maintenance of genetic
diversity in seed banks.

Figure 1.7. Growth in Number of Marine Species

Introductions (C11)

Number of new records of established non-native invertebrate and algae species
reported in marine waters of North America, shown by date of ﬁrst record, and numberof new records of non-native marine plant species reported on the European coast, bydate of ﬁrst record.
Number of species
175
Non-native marine plant species
reported on European coast
150

Non-native invertebrates andplants reported in marine
waters of North America

125

100

75

50

25

0

1790–1819 1820–49 1850–79

1880–1909

1910–39

1940–69

1970–99

Source: Millennium Ecosystem Assessment

Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s 37

Figure 1.8. Species Extinction Rates (Adapted from C4 Fig 4.22)“Distant past” refers to average
extinction rates as estimated fromthe fossil record. “Recent past”
refers to extinction rates calculated
from known extinctions of species(lower estimate) or known extinctions
plus “possibly extinct” species (upperbound). A species is considered
to be “possibly extinct” if it isbelieved by experts to be extinct
but extensive surveys have notyet been undertaken to conﬁrm its
disappearance. “Future” extinctions
are model-derived estimates using
a variety of techniques, including
species-area models, rates at which
species are shifting to increasingly
more threatened categories,
extinction probabilities associatedwith the IUCN categories of threat,
impacts of projected habitat loss
on species currently threatenedwith habitat loss, and correlationof species loss with energy
consumption. The time frame andspecies groups involved differ amongthe “future” estimates, but in generalrefer to either future loss of species
based on the level of threat thatexists today or current and future
loss of species as a result of habitat changes taking place over the period of roughly 1970 to 2050. Estimates based on the fossil record are
low certainty; lower-bound estimates for known extinctions are high certainty and upper-bound estimates are medium certainty; lower-boundestimates for modeled extinctions are low certainty and upper-bound estimates are speculative. The rate of known extinctions of species in thepast century is roughly 50–500 times greater than the extinction rate calculated from the fossil record of 0.1–1 extinctions per 1,000 species
per 1,000 years. The rate is up to 1,000 times higher than the background extinction rates if possibly extinct species are included.

38 Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s

2. How have ecosystem services and their uses changed?

Ecosystem services are the beneﬁts provided by ecosystems.
These include provisioning services such as food, water, timber, ﬁber, and genetic resources; regulating services such as theregulation of climate, ﬂoods, disease, and water quality as well as
waste treatment; cultural services such as recreation, aesthetic
enjoyment, and spiritual fulﬁllment; and supporting services suchas soil formation, pollination, and nutrient cycling. (See Box 2.1.)
Human use of all ecosystem services is growing rapidly.
Approximately 60% (15 out of 24) of the ecosystem services
evaluated in this assessment (including 70% of regulating andcultural services) are being degraded or used unsustainably.
(See Table 2.1.) Of 24 provisioning, cultural, and regulating
ecosystem services for which sufﬁcient information was available,
the use of 20 continues to increase. The use of one service, capture ﬁsheries, is now declining as a result of a decline in thequantity of ﬁsh, which in turn is due to excessive capture of ﬁshin past decades. Two other services (fuelwood and ﬁber) show
mixed patterns. The use of some types of ﬁber is increasing andothers decreasing; in the case of fuelwood, there is evidence of a
recent peak in use.
Humans have enhanced production of three ecosystem services– crops, livestock, and aquaculture – through expansion of thearea devoted to their production or through technological inputs.
Recently, the service of carbon sequestration has been enhanced
globally, due in part to the re-growth of forests in temperateregions, although previously deforestation had been a net sourceof carbon emissions. Half of provisioning services (6 of 11) andnearly 70% (9 of 13) of regulating and cultural services are being
degraded or used unsustainably.
■ Provisioning Services: The quantity of provisioning ecosystem services such as food, water, and timber used by humans
increased rapidly, often more rapidly than population growthalthough generally slower than economic growth, during thesecond half of the twentieth century. And it continues to grow.
In a number of cases, provisioning services are being used atunsustainable rates. The growing human use has been madepossible by a combination of substantial increases in the absoluteamount of some services produced by ecosystems and an increasein the fraction used by humans. World population doubled
between 1960 and 2000, from 3 billion to 6 billion people, andthe global economy increased more than sixfold. During thistime, food production increased by roughly two-and-a-half times(a 160% increase in food production between 1961 and 2003),
water use doubled, wood harvests for pulp and paper tripled, andtimber production increased by nearly 60% (C9.ES, C9.2.2, S7,
C7.2.3, C8.1). (Food production increased fourfold in developing countries over this period.)
The sustainability of the use of provisioning services differs in
different locations. However, the use of several provisioning
services is unsustainable even in the global aggregate. The current
level of use of capture ﬁsheries (marine and freshwater) is not sustainable, and many ﬁsheries have already collapsed. (See Figure 2.1.)

Figure 2.1. Estimated Global Marine Fish Catch,

1950–2001 (C18 Fig 18.3)

In this Figure, the catch reported by governments is in somecases adjusted to correct for likely errors in data.

90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
Source: Millennium Ecosystem Assessment

Currently, one quarter of important commercial ﬁsh stocks areoverexploited or signiﬁcantly depleted (high certainty) (C8.2.2).
From 5% to possibly 25% of global freshwater use exceeds longterm accessible supplies and is maintained only through engineered water transfers or the overdraft of groundwater supplies(low to medium certainty) (C7.ES). Between 15% and 35% of irrigation withdrawals exceed supply rates and are therefore unsustainable (low to medium certainty) (C7.2.2). Current agricultural
practices are also unsustainable in some regions due to their reliance on unsustainable sources of water, harmful impacts caused byexcessive nutrient or pesticide use, salinization, nutrient depletion,and rates of soil loss that exceed rates of soil formation.
■ Regulating Services: Humans have substantially alteredregulating services such as disease and climate regulation bymodifying the ecosystem providing the service and, in the caseof waste processing services, by exceeding the capabilities of
ecosystems to provide the service. Most changes to regulating
services are inadvertent results of actions taken to enhance thesupply of provisioning services. Humans have substantially modiﬁed the climate regulation service of ecosystems—ﬁrst throughland use changes that contributed to increases in the amount ofcarbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases such as methane andnitrous oxide in the atmosphere and more recently by increasing
the sequestration of carbon dioxide (although ecosystems remaina net source of methane and nitrous oxide). Modiﬁcations of(continued on page 46)

Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s 39

Box 2.1. Ecosystem Services
Ecosystem services are the beneﬁts people
obtain from ecosystems. These include provisioning, regulating, and cultural services that
directly affect people and the supporting services needed to maintain other services (CF2).
Many of the services listed here are highly interlinked. (Primary production, photosynthesis,
nutrient cycling, and water cycling, for example,
all involve different aspects of the same biological processes.)

Provisioning Services
These are the products obtained from ecosystems, including:Food. This includes the vast range of foodproducts derived from plants, animals, andmicrobes.
Fiber. Materials included here are wood, jute,cotton, hemp, silk, and wool.
Fuel. Wood, dung, and other biological materials serve as sources of energy.
Genetic resources. This includes the genes
and genetic information used for animal andplant breeding and biotechnology.
Biochemicals, natural medicines, and pharmaceuticals. Many medicines, biocides, food additives such as alginates, and biological materials
are derived from ecosystems.
Ornamental resources. Animal and plant products, such as skins, shells, and ﬂowers, areused as ornaments, and whole plants are used
for landscaping and ornaments.
Fresh water. People obtain fresh water fromecosystems and thus the supply of fresh water
can be considered a provisioning service.
Fresh water in rivers is also a source of energy.
Because water is required for other life to exist,
however, it could also be considered a supporting service.

Regulating Services
These are the beneﬁts obtained from theregulation of ecosystem processes, including:
Air quality regulation. Ecosystems bothcontribute chemicals to and extract chemicals
from the atmosphere, inﬂuencing many aspectsof air quality.
Climate regulation. Ecosystems inﬂuence climate both locally and globally. At a local scale,for example, changes in land cover can affectboth temperature and precipitation. At the global
scale, ecosystems play an important role in

40 Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i sclimate by either sequestering or emitting greenhouse gases.
Water regulation. The timing and magnitudeof runoff, ﬂooding, and aquifer recharge can bestrongly inﬂuenced by changes in land cover,including, in particular, alterations that change
the water storage potential of the system, suchas the conversion of wetlands or the replacement of forests with croplands or croplands withurban areas.
Erosion regulation. Vegetative cover plays animportant role in soil retention and the prevention of landslides.
Water puriﬁcation and waste treatment.
Ecosystems can be a source of impurities (forinstance, in fresh water) but also can help ﬁlter
out and decompose organic wastes introduced
into inland waters and coastal and marine
ecosystems and can assimilate and detoxify
compounds through soil and subsoil processes.
Disease regulation. Changes in ecosystems candirectly change the abundance of human pathogens, such as cholera, and can alter the abundance of disease vectors, such as mosquitoes.
Pest regulation. Ecosystem changes affectthe prevalence of crop and livestock pests
and diseases.
Pollination. Ecosystem changes affect the
distribution, abundance, and effectivenessof pollinators.
Natural hazard regulation. The presence ofcoastal ecosystems such as mangroves andcoral reefs can reduce the damage caused byhurricanes or large waves.

Cultural Services
These are the nonmaterial beneﬁts people obtainfrom ecosystems through spiritual enrichment,
cognitive development, reﬂection, recreation, andaesthetic experiences, including:
Cultural diversity. The diversity of ecosystems
is one factor inﬂuencing the diversity of cultures.
Spiritual and religious values. Many religions
attach spiritual and religious values to ecosystems or their components.
Knowledge systems (traditional and formal).
Ecosystems inﬂuence the types of knowledge
systems developed by different cultures.
Educational values. Ecosystems and their components and processes provide the basis for bothformal and informal education in many societies.
Inspiration. Ecosystems provide a rich sourceof inspiration for art, folklore, national symbols,
architecture, and advertising.
Aesthetic values. Many people ﬁnd beauty or
aesthetic value in various aspects of ecosystems,
as reﬂected in the support for parks, scenic
drives, and the selection of housing locations.
Social relations. Ecosystems inﬂuence thetypes of social relations that are established inparticular cultures. Fishing societies, for example,
differ in many respects in their social relations
from nomadic herding or agricultural societies.
Sense of place. Many people value the “senseof place” that is associated with recognized features of their environment, including aspects ofthe ecosystem.
Cultural heritage values. Many societies placehigh value on the maintenance of either historically important landscapes (“cultural landscapes”) or culturally signiﬁcant species.
Recreation and ecotourism. People oftenchoose where to spend their leisure time based inpart on the characteristics of the natural or cultivated landscapes in a particular area.

Supporting Services
Supporting services are those that are necessary for the production of all other ecosystemservices. They differ from provisioning, regulating, and cultural services in that their impacts
on people are often indirect or occur over a very
long time, whereas changes in the other categories have relatively direct and short-term impacts
on people. (Some services, like erosion regulation, can be categorized as both a supporting
and a regulating service, depending on the timescale and immediacy of their impact on people.)
These services include:
Soil Formation. Because many provisioning
services depend on soil fertility, the rate ofsoil formation inﬂuences human well-being inmany ways.
Photosynthesis. Photosynthesis produces
oxygen necessary for most living organisms.
Primary production. The assimilation or accumulation of energy and nutrients by organisms.
Nutrient cycling. Approximately 20 nutrients
essential for life, including nitrogen and phosphorus, cycle through ecosystems and are maintained at different concentrations in different
parts of ecosystems.
Water cycling. Water cycles through ecosystems and is essential for living organisms.

Table 2.1. Trends in the Human Use of Ecosystem Services and Enhancement or Degradation of the Service

around the Year 2000 (See page 45 for legend.)

Service

Subcategory

Human
Usea

Enhancedor Degradedb

Notes

MA
Chapter

Crops





Food provision has grown faster than overall population growth.
Primary source of growth from increase in production per unit
area but also signiﬁcant expansion in cropland. Still persistentareas of low productivity and more rapid area expansion, e.g.,
sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Latin America.

C8.2

LivestockSigniﬁcant increase in area devoted to livestock in some regions,but major source of growth has been more intensive, conﬁned
production of chicken, pigs, and cattle.

C8.2

CaptureﬁsheriesMarine ﬁsh harvest increased until the late 1980s and has
been declining since then. Currently, one quarter of marine ﬁshstocks are overexploited or signiﬁcantly depleted. Freshwater
capture ﬁsheries have also declined. Human use of captureﬁsheries as declined because of the reduced supply, notbecause of reduced demand.

C18
C8.2.2
C19

Aquaculture

Aquaculture has become a globally signiﬁcant source of food in
the last 50 years and, in 2000, contributed 27% of total ﬁsh
production. Use of ﬁsh feed for carnivorous aquaculture species
places an additional burden on capture ﬁsheries.

C8
Table 8.4

Wild plant
and animal
products

NA

Provision of these food sources is generally declining as
natural habitats worldwide are under increasing pressure
and as wild populations are exploited for food, particularly by
the poor, at unsustainable levels.

C8.3.1

Timber+/–

Global timber production has increased by 60% in the last four
decades. Plantations provide an increasing volume of harvested
roundwood, amounting to 35% of the global harvest in 2000.
Roughly 40% of forest area has been lost during the industrial era,and forests continue to be lost in many regions (thus the service
is degraded in those regions), although forest is now recovering insome temperate countries and thus this service has been enhanced(from this lower baseline) in these regions in recent decades.

C9.ES
C21.1

Cotton,hemp, silk

+/–

+/–

Cotton and silk production have doubled and tripledrespectively in the last four decades. Production of otheragricultural ﬁbers has declined.

C9.ES

Wood fuel+/–Global consumption of fuelwood appears to have peaked in the
1990s and is now believed to be slowly declining but remains
the dominant source of domestic fuel in some regions.

C9.ES





Traditional crop breeding has relied on a relatively narrow range
of germplasm for the major crop species, although molecular
genetics and biotechnology provide new tools to quantify andexpand genetic diversity in these crops. Use of genetic
resources also is growing in connection with new industries
based on biotechnology. Genetic resources have been lost
through the loss of traditional cultivars of crop species (due inpart to the adoption of modern farming practices and varieties)
and through species extinctions.

C26.2.1

Provisioning Services
Food

Fiber

Genetic
resources(continued on page 42)
Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s 41

Table 2.1. Trends in the Human Use of Ecosystem Services and Enhancement or Degradation of the Service

around the Year 2000 (See page 45 for legend.) (continued)

Service

Subcategory

Human
Usea

Enhancedor Degradedb

Biochemicals,
naturalmedicines, andpharmaceuticals

Ornamental
resources

NA

NA

Fresh water



Notes

MA
Chapter

Demand for biochemicals and new pharmaceuticals is growing,
but new synthetic technologies compete with natural products tomeet the demand. For many other natural products (cosmetics,
personal care, bioremediation, biomonitoring, ecologicalrestoration), use is growing. Species extinction and overharvestingof medicinal plants is diminishing the availability of these resources.

C10



Human modiﬁcation of ecosystems (e.g., reservoir creation) has
stabilized a substantial fraction of continental river ﬂow, making
more fresh water available to people but in dry regions reducing
river ﬂows through open water evaporation and support toirrigation that also loses substantial quantities of water.
Watershed management and vegetation changes have also had
an impact on seasonal river ﬂows. From 5% to possibly 25% of
global freshwater use exceeds long-term accessible supplies andrequires supplies either through engineered water transfers or
overdraft of groundwater supplies. Between 15% and 35% of
irrigation withdrawals exceed supply rates. Fresh water ﬂowing
in rivers also provides a service in the form of energy that is
exploited through hydropower. The construction of dams has notchanged the amount of energy, but it has made the energy moreavailable to people. The installed hydroelectric capacity doubled
between 1960 and 2000. Pollution and biodiversity loss aredeﬁning features of modern inland water systems in many
populated parts of the world.

C7





The ability of the atmosphere to cleanse itself of pollutants has
declined slightly since preindustrial times but likely not by morethan 10%. The net contribution of ecosystems to this change is
not known. Ecosystems are also a sink for tropospheric ozone,
ammonia, NOX, SO2, particulates, and CH4, but changes inthese sinks were not assessed.

C13.ES

Global



Terrestrial ecosystems were on average a net source of CO2during the nineteenth and early twentieth century and becamea net sink sometime around the middle of the last century. The
biophysical effect of historical land cover changes (1750 topresent) is net cooling on a global scale due to increased albedo,
partially offsetting the warming effect of associated carbon
emissions from land cover change over much of that period.

C13.ES

Regional
and local

Changes in land cover have affected regional and local climatesboth positively and negatively, but there is a preponderance ofnegative impacts. For example, tropical deforestation anddesertiﬁcation have tended to reduce local rainfall.

C13.3
C11.3



+/–

The effect of ecosystem change on the timing and magnitude ofrunoff, ﬂooding, and aquifer recharge depends on the ecosystem
involved and on the speciﬁc modiﬁcations made to the ecosystem.

C7.4.4

Regulating Services
Air quality
regulation

Climateregulation

Water regulation

42 Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i sService

Subcategory

Human
Usea

Enhancedor Degradedb

Notes

MA
Chapter

ErosionregulationLand use and crop/soil management practices have exacerbatedsoil degradation and erosion, although appropriate soil
conservation practices that reduce erosion, such as minimum
tillage, are increasingly being adopted by farmers in North
America and Latin America.

C26

Water
puriﬁcation
and waste
treatment

Globally, water quality is declining, although in most industrial
countries pathogen and organic pollution of surface waters has
decreased over the last 20 years. Nitrate concentration has
grown rapidly in the last 30 years. The capacity of ecosystems
to purify such wastes is limited, as evidenced by widespreadreports of inland waterway pollution. Loss of wetlands has
further decreased the ability of ecosystems to ﬁlter anddecompose wastes.

C7.2.5
C19

Diseaseregulation

+/–Ecosystem modiﬁcations associated with development haveoften increased the local incidence of infectious diseases,
although major changes in habitats can both increase or
decrease the risk of particular infectious diseases.

C14

Pest regulation

In many agricultural areas, pest control provided by natural
enemies has been replaced by the use of pesticides. Such
pesticide use has itself degraded the capacity of agroecosystems
to provide pest control. In other systems, pest control provided
by natural enemies is being used and enhanced through integrated
pest management. Crops containing pest-resistant genes canalso reduce the need for application of toxic synthetic pesticides.

C11.3

Pollination

cThere is established but incomplete evidence of a global decline
in the abundance of pollinators. Pollinator declines have beenreported in at least one region or country on every continent
except Antarctica, which has no pollinators. Declines inabundance of pollinators have rarely resulted in complete failure
to produce seed or fruit, but more frequently resulted in fewer
seeds or in fruit of reduced viability or quantity. Losses in
populations of specialized pollinators have directly affected the
reproductive ability of some rare plants.

C11
Box 11.2

Natural hazard
regulation

People are increasingly occupying regions and localities thatare exposed to extreme events, thereby exacerbating humanvulnerability to natural hazards. This trend, along with the
decline in the capacity of ecosystems to buffer from extreme
events, has led to continuing high loss of life globally andrapidly rising economic losses from natural disasters.

C16
C19

NA

NA

Cultural Services
Culturaldiversity(continued on page 44)

Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s 43

Table 2.1. Trends in the Human Use of Ecosystem Services and Enhancement or Degradation of the Service

around the Year 2000 (See page 45 for legend.) (continued)

Service

Subcategory

Human
Usea

Enhancedor Degradedb

Spiritual andreligious
valuesKnowledge
systems

NA

NA

Educational
valuesNA

NA

Inspiration

NA

NA

Aesthetic
valuesSocial relations

NA

NA

Sense of place

NA

NA

Culturalheritage values

NA

NA

Recreation andecotourism

+/–Soil formation††

Photosynthesis††

Primary
production

†

†

Notes

MA
Chapter

Cultural Services (continued)
There has been a decline in the numbers of sacred groves andother such protected areas. The loss of particular ecosystem
attributes (sacred species or sacred forests), combined with socialand economic changes, can sometimes weaken the spiritual
beneﬁts people obtain from ecosystems. On the other hand,under some circumstances (e.g., where ecosystem attributes are
causing signiﬁcant threats to people), the loss of some attributes
may enhance spiritual appreciation for what remains.

C17.2.3

The demand for aesthetically pleasing natural landscapes has
increased in accordance with increased urbanization. There has
been a decline in quantity and quality of areas to meet thisdemand. A reduction in the availability of and access to naturalareas for urban residents may have important detrimental
effects on public health and economies.

C17.2.5

The demand for recreational use of landscapes is increasing,and areas are increasingly being managed to cater for this use,
to reﬂect changing cultural values and perceptions. However,many naturally occurring features of the landscape (e.g., coral
reefs) have been degraded as resources for recreation.

C17.2.6
C19

Several global MA systems, including dryland, forest, andcultivated systems, show a trend of NPP increase for theperiod 1981 to 2000. However, high seasonal and inter-annual
variations associated with climate variability occur within thistrend on the global scale

C22.2.1

Supporting Services

44 Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i sService

Subcategory

Human
Usea

Enhancedor Degradedb

Notes

MA
Chapter

Supporting Services (continued)
Nutrient cycling††

There have been large-scale changes in nutrient cycles inrecent decades, mainly due to additional inputs from fertilizers,
livestock waste, human wastes, and biomass burning. Inland
water and coastal systems have been increasingly affected byeutrophication due to transfer of nutrients from terrestrial toaquatic systems as biological buffers that limit these transfers
have been signiﬁcantly impaired.

C12
S7

Water cycling††

Humans have made major changes to water cycles throughstructural changes to rivers, extraction of water from rivers,
and, more recently, climate change.

C7a
For provisioning services, human use increases if the human consumption of the service increases (e.g., greater food consumption); for regulating and cultural services, humanuse increases if the number of people affected by the service increases. The time frame is in general the past 50 years, although if the trend has changed within that time frame, theindicator shows the most recent trend.
b
For provisioning services, we deﬁne enhancement to mean increased production of the service through changes in area over which the service is provided (e.g., spread of
agriculture) or increased production per unit area. We judge the production to be degraded if the current use exceeds sustainable levels. For regulating and supporting services,enhancement refers to a change in the service that leads to greater beneﬁts for people (e.g., the service of disease regulation could be improved by eradication of a vector
known to transmit a disease to people). Degradation of a regulating and supporting services means a reduction in the beneﬁts obtained from the service, either through a change
in the service (e.g., mangrove loss reducing the storm protection beneﬁts of an ecosystem) or through human pressures on the service exceeding its limits (e.g., excessive
pollution exceeding the capability of ecosystems to maintain water quality). For cultural services, degradation refers to a change in the ecosystem features that decreases thecultural (recreational, aesthetic, spiritual, etc.) beneﬁts provided by the ecosystem. The time frame is in general the past 50 years, although if the trend has changed within thattime frame the indicator shows the most recent trend.
c
Low to medium certainty. All other trends are medium to high certainty.

Legend: = Increasing (for human use column) or enhanced (for enhanced or degraded column)
 = Decreasing (for human use column) or degraded (for enhanced or degraded column)+/–= Mixed (trend increases and decreases over past 50 years or some components/regions increase while others decrease)

NA = Not assessed within the MA. In some cases, the service was not addressed at all in the MA (such as ornamental resources),
while in other cases the service was included but the information and data available did not allow an assessment of the patternof human use of the service or the status of the service.
†= The categories of “human use” and “enhanced or degraded” do not apply for supporting services since, by deﬁnition, these
services are not directly used by people. (Their costs or beneﬁts would be double-counted if the indirect effects were included.)
Changes in supporting services inﬂuence the supply of provisioning, cultural, or regulating services that are then used by people
and may be enhanced or degraded.

Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s 45

ecosystems have altered patterns of disease by increasing or
decreasing habitat for certain diseases or their vectors (such as
dams and irrigation canals that provide habitat for schistosomiasis) or by bringing human populations into closer contact withvarious disease organisms. Changes to ecosystems have contributed to a signiﬁcant rise in the number of ﬂoods and major
wildﬁres on all continents since the 1940s. Ecosystems serve an
important role in detoxifying wastes introduced into the environment, but there are intrinsic limits to that waste processing capability. For example, aquatic ecosystems “cleanse” on average 80%of their global incident nitrogen loading, but this intrinsic selfpuriﬁcation capacity varies widely and is being reduced by theloss of wetlands (C7.2.5).
■ Cultural Services: Although the use of cultural services has
continued to grow, the capability of ecosystems to provide
cultural beneﬁts has been signiﬁcantly diminished in the past
century (C17). Human cultures are strongly inﬂuenced by ecosystems, and ecosystem change can have a signiﬁcant impact on
cultural identity and social stability. Human cultures, knowledge
systems, religions, heritage values, social interactions, and thelinked amenity services (such as aesthetic enjoyment, recreation,
artistic and spiritual fulﬁllment, and intellectual development)
have always been inﬂuenced and shaped by the nature of theecosystem and ecosystem conditions. Many of these beneﬁts arebeing degraded, either through changes to ecosystems (a recent
rapid decline in the numbers of sacred groves and other suchprotected areas, for example) or through societal changes (suchas the loss of languages or of traditional knowledge) that reduce
people’s recognition or appreciation of those cultural beneﬁts.
Rapid loss of culturally valued ecosystems and landscapes cancontribute to social disruptions and societal marginalization. And
there has been a decline in the quantity and quality of aesthetically pleasing natural landscapes.
Global gains in the supply of food, water, timber, and otherprovisioning services were often achieved in the past century
despite local resource depletion and local restrictions on resource
use by shifting production and harvest to new underexploitedregions, sometimes considerable distances away. These options
are diminishing. This trend is most distinct in the case of marine
ﬁsheries. As individual stocks have been depleted, ﬁshing pressure
has shifted to less exploited stocks (C18.2.1). Industrial ﬁshingﬂeets have also shifted to ﬁshing further offshore and in deeper
water to meet global demand (C18.ES). (See Figure 2.2.) A variety of drivers related to market demand, supply, and government
policies have inﬂuenced patterns of timber harvest. For example,
international trade in forest products increases when a nation’s
forests no longer can meet demand or when policies have been
established to restrict or ban timber harvest.

46 Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s

Although human demand for ecosystem services continues togrow in the aggregate, the demand for particular services in
speciﬁc regions is declining as substitutes are developed. For
example, kerosene, electricity, and other energy sources are
increasingly being substituted for fuelwood (still the primarysource of energy for heating and cooking for some 2.6 billion
people) (C9.ES). The substitution of a variety of other materials
Figure 2.2. Trend in Mean Depth of Catch

Since 1950

Fisheries catches increasingly originate from deep areas.
(Data from C18 Fig 18.5)

0
– 50
–100

– 150
– 200
– 250
– 300
Source: Millennium Ecosystem Assessment

for wood (such as vinyl, plastics, and metal) has contributed torelatively slow growth in global timber consumption in recent
years (C9.2.1). While the use of substitutes can reduce pressure
on speciﬁc ecosystem services, this may not always have positive
net environmental beneﬁts. Substitution of fuelwood by fossil
fuels, for example, reduces pressure on forests and lowers indoor
air pollution, but it may increase net greenhouse gas emissions.
Substitutes are also often costlier to provide than the original
ecosystem services.
Both the supply and the resilience of ecosystem services areaffected by changes in biodiversity. Biodiversity is the variability
among living organisms and the ecological complexes of which
they are part. When a species is lost from a particular location(even if it does not go extinct globally) or introduced to a newlocation, the various ecosystem services associated with thatspecies are changed. More generally, when a habitat is converted,an array of ecosystem services associated with the species present
in that location is changed, often with direct and immediateimpacts on people (S10). Changes in biodiversity also havenumerous indirect impacts on ecosystem services over longer
time periods, including inﬂuencing the capacity of ecosystems
to adjust to changing environments (medium certainty), causing
disproportionately large and sometimes irreversible changes inecosystem processes, inﬂuencing the potential for infectious
disease transmission, and, in agricultural systems, inﬂuencing
the risk of crop failure in a variable environment and altering
the potential impacts of pests and pathogens (medium to highcertainty) (C11.ES, C14.ES).
The modiﬁcation of an ecosystem to alter one ecosystemservice (to increase food or timber production, for instance)
generally results in changes to other ecosystem services as well
(CWG, SG7). Trade-offs among ecosystem services are commonplace. (See Table 2.2.) For example, actions to increase foodproduction often involve one or more of the following: increased
water use, degraded water quality, reduced biodiversity, reduced
forest cover, loss of forest products, or release of greenhousegases. Frequent cultivation, irrigated rice production, livestock
production, and burning of cleared areas and crop residues now
release 1,600±800 million tons of carbon per year in CO2 (C26.
ES). Cultivation, irrigated rice production, and livestock production release between 106 million and 201 million tons of carbon
per year in methane (C13 Table 13.1). About 70% of anthropogenic nitrous oxide gas emissions are attributable to agriculture,mostly from land conversion and nitrogen fertilizer use (C26.
ES). Similarly, the conversion of forest to agriculture can signiﬁcantly change ﬂood frequency and magnitude, although theamount and direction of this impact is highly dependent on thecharacteristics of the local ecosystem and the nature of the land
cover change (C21.5.2).
Many trade-offs associated with ecosystem services are
expressed in areas remote from the site of degradation. For example, conversion of forests to agriculture can affect water quality
and ﬂood frequency downstream of where the ecosystem change
occurred. And increased application of nitrogen fertilizers tocroplands can have negative impacts on coastal water quality.
These trade-offs are rarely taken fully into account in decisionmaking, partly due to the sectoral nature of planning and partly
because some of the effects are also displaced in time (such as
long-term climate impacts).
The net beneﬁts gained through actions to increase the productivity or harvest of ecosystem services have been less than initially believed after taking into account negative trade-offs. The
beneﬁts of resource management actions have traditionally been
evaluated only from the standpoint of the service targeted by the
management intervention. However, management interventions
to increase any particular service almost always result in costs toother services. Negative trade-offs are commonly found between
individual provisioning services and between provisioning services

and the combined regulating, cultural, and supporting services
and biodiversity. Taking the costs of these negative trade-offs into
account reduces the apparent beneﬁts of the various management
interventions. For example:■ Expansion of commercial shrimp farming has had serious
impacts on ecosystems, including loss of vegetation, deteriorationof water quality, decline of capture ﬁsheries, and loss of biodiversity (R6, C19).
■ Expansion of livestock production around the world hasoften led to overgrazing and dryland degradation, rangeland
fragmentation, loss of wildlife habitat, dust formation, bushencroachment, deforestation, nutrient overload through disposalof manure, and greenhouse gas emissions (R6.ES).
■ Poorly designed and executed agricultural policies led to an
irreversible change in the Aral Sea ecosystem. By 1998, the Aral
Sea had lost more than 60% of its area and approximately 80%
of its volume, and ecosystem-related problems in the region now
include excessive salt content of major rivers, contamination ofagricultural products with agrochemicals, high levels of turbidity
in major water sources, high levels of pesticides and phenols insurface waters, loss of soil fertility, extinctions of species, anddestruction of commercial ﬁsheries (R6 Box 6.9).
■ Forested riparian wetlands adjacent to the Mississippi riverin the United States had the capacity to store about 60 days ofriver discharge. With the removal of the wetlands through canalization, leveeing, and draining, the remaining wetlands have astorage capacity of less than 12 days discharge, an 80% reduction
in ﬂood storage capacity (C16.1.1).
However, positive synergies can be achieved as well when
actions to conserve or enhance a particular component of an
ecosystem or its services beneﬁt other services or stakeholders.
Agroforestry can meet human needs for food and fuel, restore
soils, and contribute to biodiversity conservation. Intercropping can increase yields, increase biocontrol, reduce soil erosion, and reduce weed invasion in ﬁelds. Urban parks and otherurban green spaces provide spiritual, aesthetic, educational, andrecreational beneﬁts as well as such services such as water puriﬁcation, wildlife habitat, waste management, and carbon
sequestration. Protection of natural forests for biodiversity conservation can also reduce carbon emissions and protect watersupplies. Protection of wetlands can contribute to ﬂood control
and also help to remove pollutants such as phosphorus andnitrogen from the water. For example, it is estimated that thenitrogen load from the heavily polluted Illinois River basin to
the Mississippi River could be cut in half by converting 7% of
the basin back to wetlands (R9.4.5). Positive synergies often
exist among regulating, cultural, and supporting services andwith biodiversity conservation.

Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s 47

Table 2.2. Indicative Ecosystem Service Trade-offs
The nature and direction of trade-offs among ecosystem services depends signiﬁcantly on the speciﬁc management practices used to change thetarget service and on the ecosystem involved. This table summarizes common directions of trade-offs encountered across ecosystem services,
although the magnitude (or even direction) of the trade-off may differ from case to case.

Fiber
Production

CarbonSequestration

Disease
Reduction

Flood
Control

Ecotourism
Potential

N Regulation(Avoidance of
Eutrophication)

Notes

Water
Availability
and Quality

Cultural Supporting
Services Services

Food
Production

Provisioning Services Regulating Services

Intervention
target

–

o

–

+/–

o

o

–

Agricultural ecosystems reduce exposure tocertain diseases but increase the riskof other diseases

Increased foodInterproduction through vention
expansion oftargetagriculture

–

–

–

+/–

–

–

–

Increased wildﬁsh catchIntervention
target

NA

NA

NA

NA

NA

+/–

+/–

Increased ﬁsh catch can increase ecotourism
opportunities (e.g., increased sport ﬁshing
opportunities) or decrease them if the levels
are unsustainable or if the increased catch
reduces populations of predators that attract
tourists (e.g., killer whales, seals, sea lions).

Damming rivers
to increase water
availability+

Intervention
target

–

+/–

–

+/–

+/–

–

River modiﬁcation can reduce ﬂood frequency
but increase the risk and magnitude ofcatastrophic ﬂoods. Reservoirs provide
some recreational opportunities but those
associated with the original river are lost.

Increased timber
harvest–+/–Intervention
target

–

+/–

+/–

–

o

Timber harvest generally reduces
availability of wild sources of food.

Draining or ﬁlling
wetlands to reduce
malaria risk

+

–

o

o

Intervention
target–––Filled wetlands are often used for agriculture.
Loss of wetlands results in a loss of watercleansing capability, loss of a source of
ﬂood control and ecotourism potential.

Establishing astrictly protectedarea to maintainbiodiversity andprovide recreation

–

+

–

+

+/–

+

+

+

Strictly protected areas may result in theloss of a local source of food supply andﬁber production. The presence of theprotected area safeguards water supplies
and water quality, prevents emissions ofgreenhouse gases that might have resulted
from habitat conversion and increases
tourism potential.

Management
Practice

Increased foodproduction throughintensiﬁcation ofagriculture

Legend:– = change in the ﬁrst column has a negative impact on the service+ = change in the ﬁrst column has a positive impact on the serviceo = change in the ﬁrst column is neutral or has no effect on the service
NA = the category is not applicable

48 Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s

3. How have ecosystem changes affected human well-being

and poverty alleviation?
Relationships between Ecosystem Services
and Human Well-beingChanges in ecosystem services inﬂuence all components ofhuman well-being, including the basic material needs fora good life, health, good social relations, security, and freedomof choice and action (CF3). (See Box 3.1.) Humans are fully
dependent on Earth’s ecosystems and the services that they
provide, such as food, clean water, disease regulation, climate
regulation, spiritual fulﬁllment, and aesthetic enjoyment. The
relationship between ecosystem services and human well-being is
mediated by access to manufactured, human, and social capital.
Human well-being depends on ecosystem services but also on the
supply and quality of social capital, technology, and institutions.
These factors mediate the relationship between ecosystemservices and human well-being in ways that remain contested andincompletely understood. The relationship between human wellbeing and ecosystem services is not linear. When an ecosystemservice is abundant relative to the demand, a marginal increase inecosystem services generally contributes only slightly to humanwell-being (or may even diminish it). But when the service isrelatively scarce, a small decrease can substantially reduce humanwell-being (S.SDM, SG3.4).
Ecosystem services contribute signiﬁcantly to global
employment and economic activity. The ecosystem service offood production contributes by far the most to economic activity
and employment. In 2000, the market value of food production
was $981 billion, or roughly 3% of gross world product, but it is amuch higher share of GDP within developing countries (C8 Table
8.1). That year, for example, agriculture (including forestry andﬁshing) represented 24% of total GDP in countries with per capita
incomes less than $765 (the low-income developing countries,
as deﬁned by the World Bank) (C26.5.1). The agricultural labor
force contained 1.3 billion people globally—approximately afourth (22%) of the world’s population and half (46%) of thetotal labor force—and some 2.6 billion people, more than 40%of the world, lived in agriculturally based households (C26.5.1).
Signiﬁcant differences exist between developing and industrial
countries in these patterns. For example, in the United States only
2.4% of the labor force works in agriculture.
Other ecosystem services (or commodities based on ecosystemservices) that make signiﬁcant contributions to national
economic activity include timber (around $400 billion), marine
ﬁsheries (around $80 billion in 2000), marine aquaculture ($57billion in 2000), recreational hunting and ﬁshing ($50 billion
and $24–37 billion annually respectively in the United Statesalone), as well as edible forest products, botanical medicines,
and medicinal plants (C9.ES, C18.1, C20.ES). And many otherindustrial products and commodities rely on ecosystem services
such as water as inputs.

The degradation of ecosystem services represents a loss of acapital asset (C5.4.1). (See Figure 3.1.) Both renewable resources
such as ecosystem services and nonrenewable resources such as
mineral deposits, soil nutrients, and fossil fuels are capital assets.
Yet traditional national accounts do not include measures ofresource depletion or of the degradation of renewable resources.
As a result, a country could cut its forests and deplete its
ﬁsheries, and this would show only as a positive gain to GDP
despite the loss of the capital asset. Moreover, many ecosystemservices are available freely to those who use them (fresh waterin aquifers, for instance, or the use of the atmosphere as a sink
for pollutants), and so again their degradation is not reﬂected instandard economic measures.
When estimates of the economic losses associated with thedepletion of natural assets are factored into measurements ofthe total wealth of nations, they signiﬁcantly change the balance
sheet of those countries with economies especially dependent
on natural resources. For example, countries such as Ecuador,
Ethiopia, Kazakhstan, Republic of Congo, Trinidad and Tobago,
Uzbekistan, and Venezuela that had positive growth in net savings(reﬂecting a growth in the net wealth of the country) in 2001
actually experienced a loss in net savings when depletion of natural
resources (energy and forests) and estimated damages from carbon
emissions (associated with contributions to climate change) werefactored into the accounts. In 2001, in 39 countries out of the
122 countries for which sufﬁcient data were available, net nationalsavings (expressed as a percent of gross national income) werereduced by at least 5% when costs associated with the depletion ofnatural resources (unsustainable forestry, depletion of fossil fuels)and damage from carbon emissions were included.
The degradation of ecosystem services often causes signiﬁcantharm to human well-being (C5 Box 5.2). The information
available to assess the consequences of changes in ecosystem services
for human well-being is relatively limited. Many ecosystem services
have not been monitored and it is also difﬁcult to estimate therelative inﬂuence of changes in ecosystem services in relation toother social, cultural, and economic factors that also affect humanwell-being. Nevertheless, the following evidence demonstrates thatthe harmful effects of the degradation of ecosystem services on
livelihoods, health, and local and national economies are substantial.
■ Most resource management decisions are most strongly inﬂuenced
by ecosystem services entering markets; as a result, the nonmarketed
beneﬁts are often lost or degraded. Many ecosystem services, such as
the puriﬁcation of water, regulation of ﬂoods, or provision of(continued on page 56)

Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s 49

Box 3.1. Linkages between Ecosystem Services and Human Well-being
Human well-being has ﬁve main components:
the basic material needs for a good life,
health, good social relations, security, andfreedom of choice and action. (See Box FigureA.) This last component is inﬂuenced by otherconstituents of well-being (as well as by otherfactors including, notably, education) and isalso a precondition for achieving other components of well-being, particularly with respect toequity and fairness. Human well-being is a continuum—from extreme deprivation, or poverty,

to a high attainment or experience of wellbeing. Ecosystems underpin human well-being
through supporting, provisioning, regulating,and cultural services. Well-being also depends
on the supply and quality of human services,
technology, and institutions.
Basic Materials for a Good Life
This refers to the ability to have a secure andadequate livelihood, including income andassets, enough food and water at all times,

shelter, ability to have energy to keep warmand cool, and access to goods. Changes inprovisioning services such as food, water, andfuelwood have very strong impacts on the adequacy of material for a good life. Access tothese materials is heavily mediated by socioeconomic circumstances. For the wealthy,
local changes in ecosystems may not cause asigniﬁcant change in their access to necessary
material goods, which can be purchased fromother locations, sometimes at artiﬁcially low

Box Figure A. Illustration of Linkages between Ecosystem Services and Human Well-being
This ﬁgure depicts the strength of linkages between categories of ecosystem services and components of human well-being that are commonly
encountered, and includes indications of the extent to which it is possible for socioeconomic factors to mediate the linkage. (For example, if it ispossible to purchase a substitute for a degraded ecosystem service, then there is a high potential for mediation.) The strength of the linkages
and the potential for mediation differ in different ecosystems and regions. In addition to the inﬂuence of ecosystem services on human well-being
depicted here, other factors—including other environmental factors as well as economic, social, technological, and cultural factors—inﬂuence
human well-being, and ecosystems are in turn affected by changes in human well-being.

CONSTITUENTS OF WELL-BEINGECOSYSTEM SERVICES
Provisioning
FOOD
FRESH WATER
WOOD AND FIBER
FUEL
...

Supporting
NUTRIENT CYCLING
SOIL FORMATIONPRIMARY PRODUCTION...

Regulating
CLIMATE REGULATIONFLOOD REGULATIONDISEASE REGULATIONWATER PURIFICATION...

Cultural
AESTHETICSPIRITUALEDUCATIONAL
RECREATIONAL...

LIFE ON EARTH - BIODIVERSITY
ARROW’S COLOR
Potential for mediation bysocioeconomic factors

ARROW’S WIDTH
Intensity of linkages between ecosystemservices and human well-being

Low

Weak

MediumMediumHigh

Strong50 Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i sSecurityPERSONAL SAFETYSECURE RESOURCE ACCESSSECURITY FROM DISASTERS

Basic material
for good life
ADEQUATE LIVELIHOODSSUFFICIENT NUTRITIOUS FOOD
SHELTERACCESS TO GOODS

HealthSTRENGTHFEELING WELLACCESS TO CLEAN AIR
AND WATER

Freedomof choiceand action
OPPORTUNITY TO BE
ABLE TO ACHIEVEWHAT AN INDIVIDUALVALUES DOING
AND BEING

Good social relations
SOCIAL COHESIONMUTUAL RESPECT
ABILITY TO HELP OTHERS
Source: Millennium Ecosystem Assessmentprices if governments provide subsidies (forexample, water delivery systems). Changes inregulating services inﬂuencing water supply,
pollination and food production, and climate
have very strong impacts on this element of
human well-being. These, too, can be mediated by socioeconomic circumstances, but toa smaller extent. Changes in cultural services
have relatively weak linkages to material elements of well-being. Changes in supporting
services have a strong inﬂuence by virtue of
their inﬂuence on provisioning and regulating
services. The following are some examplesof material components of well-being affectedby ecosystem change.
■ Income and Employment: Increased production of crops, ﬁsheries, and forest products
has been associated with signiﬁcant growth
in local and national economies. Changes in
the use and management of these services
can either increase employment (as, for example, when agriculture spreads to new regions)or decrease it through gains in productivity of labor. In regions where productivity has
declined due to land degradation or overharvesting of ﬁsheries, the impacts on local economies and employment can be devastating
to the poor or to those who rely on these services for income.
■ Food: The growth in food production andfarm productivity has more than kept pacewith global population growth, resulting in signiﬁcant downward pressure on the price offoodstuffs. Following signiﬁcant spikes in the
1970s caused primarily by oil crises, there
have been persistent and profound reductionsin the price of foodstuffs globally (C8.1). Overthe last 40 years, food prices have dropped
by around 40% in real terms due to increases
in productivity (C26.2.3). It is well establishedthat past increases in food production, at progressively lower unit cost, have improved thehealth and well-being of billions, particularly
the most needy, who spend the largest shareof their incomes on food (C8.1). Increased
production of food and lower prices forfood have not been entirely positive. Amongindustrial countries, and increasingly amongdeveloping ones, diet-related risks, mainly
associated with overnutrition, in combination
with physical inactivity now account for one

third of the burden of disease (R16.1.2). At
present, over 1 billion adults are overweight,
with at least 300 million considered clinicallyobese, up from 200 million in 1995 (C8.5.1).
■ Water Availability: The modiﬁcation ofrivers and lakes through the construction ofdams and diversions has increased the water
available for human use in many regions of theworld. However, the declining per capita availability of water is having negative impacts onhuman well-being. Water scarcity is a globally signiﬁcant and accelerating condition forroughly 1–2 billion people worldwide, leading to
problems with food production, human health,and economic development. Rates of increasein a key water scarcity measure (water use relative to accessible supply) from 1960 to thepresent averaged nearly 20% per decade globally, with values of 15% to more than 30% per
decade for individual continents (C7.ES).

Box Table. Selected Water-related Diseases
Approximate yearly number of cases, mortality, and disability-adjusted life years. The DALY
is a summary measure of population health, calculated on a population scale as the sumof years lost due to premature mortality and of healthy years lost to disability for incident
cases of the ill-health condition (C7 Table 7.10).
DiseaseNumberof Cases

Diarrhea

4 billion

62,000(54,000)a

1,800(1,700)awater
contaminatedby human feces

Malaria

300–500 million

46,5001,300

transmitted by
Anopheles
mosquitoes

200 million

1,700

15

transmitted byaquatic mollusks

Dengue anddenguehemorrhagic
fever

50–100 million
dengue;500,000 DHF

616

19

transmitted byAedes
mosquitoes

Onchocerciasis(river blindness)

18 million

4840transmitted
by black ﬂy

Typhoid andparatyphoid
fevers17 million

Trachoma

150 million, with 6
million blind

Cholera140,000–184,000a

Schistosomiasis

Dracunculiasis(Guinea worm
disease)96,000

DisabilityEstimatedAdjusted Life
Mortality
Years(thousand)(thousand DALYs)

Relationship to
Freshwater
Services

contaminatedwater,
food, ﬂooding
2,300

0

lack ofbasic hygiene

5–28bwater and foodcontaminated byhuman feces
contaminatedwater

Diarrhea is a water-related disease, but not all diarrhea is associated with contaminated water.
The number in parentheses refers to the diarrhea speciﬁcally associated with contaminated water.
b
The upper part of the range refers speciﬁcally to 2001.
a(continued on page 52)
Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s 51

Box 3.1. Linkages between Ecosystem Services and Human Well-being (continued)
HealthBy health, we refer to the ability of an individual to feel well and be strong, or in otherwords to be adequately nourished and freefrom disease, to have access to adequate
and clean drinking water and clean air, and tohave the ability to have energy to keep warmand cool. Human health is both a product anda determinant of well-being. Changes in provisioning services such as food, water, medicinal plants, and access to new medicines andchanges in regulating services that inﬂuence
air quality, water quality, disease regulation,
and waste treatment also have very strong
impacts on health. Changes in cultural services can have strong inﬂuences on health,since they affect spiritual, inspirational, aesthetic, and recreational opportunities, andthese in turn affect both physical and emotional states. Changes in supporting services
have a strong inﬂuence on all of the othercategories of services. These beneﬁts aremoderately mediated by socioeconomic circumstances. The wealthy can purchase substitutes for some health beneﬁts of ecosystems(such as medicinal plants or water quality),
but they are more susceptible to changes
affecting air quality. The following are someexamples of health components of well-being
affected by ecosystem change.
■ Nutrition: In 2000, about a quarter ofthe burden of disease among the poorest

countries was attributable to childhood andmaternal undernutrition. Worldwide, undernutrition accounted for nearly 10% of the global
burden of disease (R16.1.2).
■ Water and Sanitation: The burden of disease
from inadequate water, sanitation, and hygiene
totals 1.7 million deaths and results in the lossof at least 54 million healthy life years annually. Along with sanitation, water availability
and quality are well recognized as importantrisk factors for infectious diarrhea and othermajor diseases. (See Box Table.) Some 1.1
billion people lack access to clean drinking
water, and more than 2.6 billion lack accessto sanitation (C7.ES). (See Box Figures B and
C.) Globally, the economic cost of pollution of

Box Figure B. Proportion of Population with Improved Drinking Water Supply in 2002 (C7 Fig 7.13)
Access to improved drinking water is estimated by the percentage of the population using the following drinking water sources: household
connection, public standpipe, borehole, protected dug well, protected spring, or rainwater collection.

PACIFICOCEANPACIFICATLANTIC

INDIAN

OCEAN

OCEAN

OCEAN

52 Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i scoastal waters is estimated to be $16 billion
annually, mainly due to human health impacts(C19.3.1).
■ Vector-borne Disease: Actions to reduce
vector-borne diseases have resulted in major
health gains and helped to relieve important
constraints on development in poor regions.
Vector-borne diseases cause approximately
1.4 million deaths a year, mainly due tomalaria in Africa. These infections are both aneffect and a cause of poverty (R12.ES). Prevalence of a number of infectious diseases
appears to be growing, and environmental
changes such as deforestation, dam construction, road building, agricultural conversion,and urbanization are contributing factors inmany cases (C14.2).
■ Medicines: The use of natural products in thepharmaceutical industry has tended to ﬂuctuate
widely, with a general decline in pharmaceutical bioprospecting by major companies. Historically, most drugs were obtained from natural
products. Even near the end of the twentiethcentury, approximately 50% of prescription
medicines were originally discovered in plants(C10.2). Natural products still are actively usedin drug exploration. Medicinal plants continue
to play an important role in health care systems in many parts of the world. One MA subglobal assessment in the Mekong wetlands

identiﬁed more than 280 medically important
plant species, of which 150 are still in regularuse (C10.2.2). Medicinal plants have generally
declined in availability due to overharvesting
and loss of habitats (C10.5.4).
Good Social Relations
Good social relations refer to the presence ofsocial cohesion, mutual respect, and the ability to help others and provide for children.
Changes in provisioning and regulating ecosystem services can affect social relations,principally through their more direct impacts
on material well-being, health, and security.
Changes in cultural services can have a strong

Box Figure C. Proportion of Population with Improved Sanitation Coverage in 2002 (C7 Fig 7.14)
Access to improved sanitation is estimated by the percentage of the population using the following sanitation facilities: connection to a publicsewer, connection to a septic system, pour-ﬂush latrine, simple pit latrine (a portion of pit latrines are also considered unimproved sanitation),and ventilated improved pit latrine.

PACIFICOCEANPACIFICATLANTIC

INDIAN

OCEAN

OCEAN

OCEAN

(continued on page 54)
Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s 53

Box 3.1. Linkages between Ecosystem Services and Human Well-being (continued)
inﬂuence on social relations, particularly in cultures that have retained strong connections tolocal environments. Changes in provisioning
and regulating services can be mediated bysocioeconomic factors, but those in cultural
services cannot. Even a wealthy country like
Sweden or the United Kingdom cannot readily
purchase a substitute to a cultural landscapethat is valued by the people in the community.
Changes in ecosystems have tended toincrease the accessibility that people have toecosystems for recreation and ecotourism.
There are clear examples of declining ecosystem services disrupting social relations
or resulting in conﬂicts. Indigenous societies
whose cultural identities are tied closely toparticular habitats or wildlife suffer if habitats
are destroyed or wildlife populations decline.
Such impacts have been observed in coastalﬁshing communities, Arctic populations, traditional forest societies, and pastoral nomadic
societies (C5.4.4).
Security
By security, we refer to safety of person
and possessions, secure access to necessary resources, and security from natural andhuman-made disasters. Changes in regulating services such as disease regulation, climate regulation, and ﬂood regulation havevery strong inﬂuences on security. Changes inprovisioning services such as food and water
have strong impacts on security, since degradation of these can lead to loss of access tothese essential resources. Changes in cultural
services can inﬂuence security since they cancontribute to the breakdown or strengtheningof social networks within society. Changes insupporting services have a strong inﬂuence byvirtue of their inﬂuence on all the other categories of services. These beneﬁts are moderately
mediated by socioeconomic circumstances.
The wealthy have access to some safety nets
that can minimize the impacts of some ecosystem changes (such as ﬂood or drought
insurance). Nevertheless, the wealthy cannot
entirely escape exposure to some of thesechanges in areas where they live.
One example of an aspect of security
affected by ecosystem change involves inﬂuences on the severity and magnitude of ﬂoods

54 Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i sand major ﬁres. The incidence of these has
increased signiﬁcantly over the past 50 years.
Changes in ecosystems and in the management of ecosystems have contributed to thesetrends. The canalization of rivers, for example,
tends to decrease the incidence and impactof small ﬂood events and increase the incidence and severity of large ones. On average,
140 million people are affected by ﬂoods eachyear—more than all other natural or technological disasters put together. Between 1990
and 1999, more than 100,000 people were
killed in ﬂoods, which caused a total of $243
billion in damages (C7.4.4).
Freedom of Choice and Action
Freedom of choice and action refers to theability of individuals to control what happens
to them and to be able to achieve what theyvalue doing or being. Freedom and choicecannot exist without the presence of the otherelements of well-being, so there is an indirect inﬂuence of changes in all categories
of ecosystem services on the attainment of
this constituent of well-being. The inﬂuenceof ecosystem change on freedom and choice
is heavily mediated by socioeconomic circumstances. The wealthy and people living
in countries with efﬁcient governments andstrong civil society can maintain freedom andchoice even in the face of signiﬁcant ecosystem change, while this would be impossible
for the poor if, for example, the ecosystemchange resulted in a loss of livelihood.
In the aggregate, the state of our knowledge about the impact that changing ecosystem conditions have on freedom and choice
is relatively limited. Declining provision of fuelwood and drinking water have been shown toincrease the amount of time needed to collectsuch basic necessities, which in turn reduces
the amount of time available foreducation, employment, and care of family
members. Such impacts are typically thought
to be disproportionately experienced by
women (although the empirical foundation forthis view is relatively limited) (C5.4.2).

Burundi
Malaysia
UkraineViet Nam
Mongolia

Figure 3.1. Net National Savings in 2001 Adjusted for Investments in Human Capital, Natural

Resource Depletion, and Damage Caused by Pollution Compared with Standard Net
National Savings Measurements (C5.2.6)
GROWTH IN WEALTHDECLINE IN WEALTH– 50% – 40% – 30% – 20% – 10%

0

10%

20%

30%

40%

Congo
Uzbekistan
KuwaitAzerbaijan
Saudi Arabia
AngolaKazakhstan
Iran
Syria
Trinidad andTobagoVenezuela
Mauritania
Bahrain
EcuadorIndonesia

Bolivia
Cameroon
GuyanaSierraPositive values for national savings (expressed as a percent
of Leonegross national income) reﬂect a gain in wealth for a nation.Pakistan
Standard
measures do not incorporate investments in human capital (in standard
Ugandanational accounting, these expenditures are treated as consumption),
Guineadepletion of a variety of natural resources, or pollution damages.
The World Bank provides estimates of adjusted net nationalColombia
savings,
taking into account education expenses (which are added to standard
China
measures), unsustainable forest harvest, depletion of nonrenewable
resources (minerals and energy), and damage from carbonChileemissionsrelated to its contribution to climate change (all of which are
Romania
subtracted from the standard measure). The adjusted measure stilloverestimates actual net national savings, since it does notMexico
includepotential changes in many ecosystem services including depletion
Egypt ofﬁsheries, atmospheric pollution, degradation of sources of fresh water,
Belarusand loss of noncommercial forests and the ecosystem services theyTogo
provide. Here we show the change in net national savings in2001 forcountries in which there was a decline of at least 5% in netCanada
nationalsavings due to the incorporation of resource depletion or damage
Tunisiafrom carbon emissions.
South Africa
Legend for the columns
Net savings, in percent of GNI: indicator of wealth taking into
account only economic parameters.

BurundiAdjusted net savings, in percent of GNI: net savings indicator
inclusive of human capital (e.g., education) and natural resources
depletion (e.g., unsustainable forestry, energy use, CO2 pollution)

Malaysia

Difference between net savings and adjusted net savings in 2001

Ethiopia

UkraineViet Nam
Mongolia
Bolivia

Legend for the backgroundResource depletion and damage accounted for loss of:
25 to 60%

10 to 25%

5 to 10%Source: Millennium Ecosystem Assessment

Cameroon
GuyanaSierra Leone
Pakistan
UgandaGuineaColombia
China
Chile
Romania
MexicoEgypt
BelarusTogo
CanadaTunisiaSouth Africa
Legend for the columns
Net savings, in percent of GNI: indicator of wealth taking into
account only economic parameters.
Adjusted net savings, in percent of GNI: net savings indicator
inclusive of human capital (e.g., education) and natural resources
depletion (e.g., unsustainable forestry, energy use, CO2 pollution)
Difference between net savings and adjusted net savings in 2001

Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s 55

aesthetic beneﬁts, do not pass through markets. The beneﬁts they
provide to society, therefore, are largely unrecorded: only a portionof the total beneﬁts provided by an ecosystem make their way into
statistics, and many of these are misattributed (the water regulation
beneﬁts of wetlands, for example, do not appear as beneﬁts ofwetlands but as higher proﬁts in water-using sectors). Moreover,for ecosystem services that do not pass through markets there isoften insufﬁcient incentive for individuals to invest in maintenance(although in some cases common property management systems
provide such incentives). Typically, even if individuals areaware of the services provided by an ecosystem, they are neither
compensated for providing these services nor penalized for reducing
them. These nonmarketed beneﬁts are often high and sometimes
more valuable than the marketed beneﬁts. For example:■ Total economic value of forests. One of the most comprehensive studies to date, which examined the marketed andnonmarketed economic values associated with forests ineight Mediterranean countries, found that timber andfuelwood generally accounted for less than a third of total
economic value in each country. (See Figure 3.2.)■ Recreational beneﬁts of protected areas: The annual recreational value of the coral reefs of each of six Marine Management Areas in the Hawaiian Islands in 2003 ranged
from $300,000 to $35 million.
■ Water quality: The net present value in 1998 of protecting water quality in the 360-kilometer Catawba Riverin the United States for ﬁve years was estimated to be$346 million.
■ Water puriﬁcation service of wetlands: About half of the total
economic value of the Danube River Floodplain in 1992
could be accounted for in its role as a nutrient sink.
■ Native pollinators: A study in Costa Rica found that forestbased pollinators increased coffee yields by 20% within
1 kilometer of the forest (as well as increasing the qualityof the coffee). During 2000–03, pollination services fromtwo forest fragments (of 46 and 111 hectares) thusincreased the income of a 1,100-hectare farm by $60,000
a year, a value commensurate with expected revenues fromcompeting land uses.
■ Flood control: Muthurajawela Marsh, a 3,100-hectare
coastal peat bog in Sri Lanka, provides an estimated $5 million in annual beneﬁts ($1,750 per hectare) through its rolein local ﬂood control.
■ The total economic value associated with managing ecosystems
more sustainably is often higher than the value associated with theconversion of the ecosystem through farming, clear-cut logging, orother intensive uses. Relatively few studies have compared the total
economic value (including values of both marketed and nonmarketed ecosystem services) of ecosystems under alternate management regimes, but a number of studies that do exist have found

56 Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i sFigure 3.2. Annual Flow of Beneﬁts from

Forests in Selected Countries(Adapted from C5 Box 5.2)

In most countries, the marketed values of ecosystems associatedwith timber and fuelwood production are less than one third of thetotal economic value, including nonmarketed values such as carbon
sequestration, watershed protection, and recreation.

Source: Millennium Ecosystem Assessment
200
180
160
140
120
100
80
60
40
20
0
– 20

that the beneﬁt of managing the ecosystem more sustainably
exceeded that of converting the ecosystem (see Figure 3.3),
although the private beneﬁts—that is, the actual monetary beneﬁts captured from the services entering the market—would favor
conversion or unsustainable management. These studies are consistent with the understanding that market failures associatedwith ecosystem services lead to greater conversion of ecosystems
than is economically justiﬁed. However, this ﬁnding would not
hold at all locations. For example, the value of conversion of an
ecosystem in areas of prime agricultural land or in urban regions
often exceeds the total economic value of the intact ecosystem.

(Although even in dense urban areas, the total ecoFigure 3.3. Economic Beneﬁts under Alternate Management
nomic value of maintaining some “green space”
Practices (C5 Box 5.2)
can be greater than development of these sites.)
In each case, the net beneﬁts from the more sustainably managed ecosystem are■ The economic and public health costs associatedgreater than those from the converted ecosystem even though the private (market)
with damage to ecosystem services can be substantial.
beneﬁts would be greater from the converted ecosystem. (Where ranges of values are■ The early 1990s collapse of the Newfoundgiven in the original source, lower estimates are plotted here.)land cod ﬁshery due to overﬁshing (seeFigure 3.4) resulted in the loss of tens of
thousands of jobs and has cost at least $2
billion in income support and retraining.
■ The cost of U.K. agriculture in 1996 resulting from the damage that agricultural practices cause to water (pollution,
eutrophication), air (emissions of greenhouse gases), soil (off-site erosion damage,carbon dioxide loss), and biodiversity was$2.6 billion, or 9% of average yearly grossfarm receipts for the 1990s. Similarly, thedamage costs of freshwater eutrophication
alone in England and Wales was estimatedto be $105–160 million per year in the
1990s, with an additional $77 million peryear being spent to address those damages.
■ The burning of 10 million hectares ofIndonesia’s forests in 1997/98 cost an estimated $9.3 billion in increased health care,lost production, and lost tourism revenues
and affected some 20 million people acrossthe region.
■ The total damages for the Indian Ocean
region over 20 years (with a 10% discountrate) resulting from the long-term impactsof the massive 1998 coral bleaching episodeare estimated to be between $608 million(if there is only a slight decrease in tourismgenerated income and employment results)
and $8 billion (if tourism income andemployment and ﬁsh productivity drop signiﬁcantly and reefs cease to function as aprotective barrier).
■ The net annual loss of economic value associated with invasive species in the fynbos
vegetation of the Cape Floral region of
Source: Millennium Ecosystem Assessment
South Africa in 1997 was estimated to be$93.5 million, equivalent to a reduction of
the potential economic value without theinvasive species of more than 40%. The invasive species
waters are increasing in frequency and intensity, harming
have caused losses of biodiversity, water, soil, and scenic
other marine resources such as ﬁsheries and harming
beauty, although they also provide some beneﬁts, such as
human health (R16 Figure 16.3). In a particularly severe
provision of ﬁrewood.
outbreak in Italy in 1989, harmful algal blooms cost the■ The incidence of diseases of marine organisms and emercoastal aquaculture industry $10 million and the Italiangence of new pathogens is increasing, and some of these,
tourism industry $11.4 million (C19.3.1).
such as ciguatera, harm human health (C19.3.1). Episodes of harmful (including toxic) algal blooms in coastal

Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s 57

Figure 3.4. Collapse of Atlantic Cod Stocks off the East Coast of Newfoundland in 1992 (CF Box 2.4)
This collapse forced the closure of
the ﬁshery after hundreds of years of
exploitation. Until the late 1950s, theﬁshery was exploited by migratory seasonal
ﬂeets and resident inshore small-scaleﬁshers. From the late 1950s, offshore
bottom trawlers began exploiting thedeeper part of the stock, leading to a large
catch increase and a strong decline in theunderlying biomass. Internationally agreed
quotas in the early 1970s and, following
the declaration by Canada of an Exclusive
Fishing Zone in 1977, national quota
systems ultimately failed to arrest andreverse the decline. The stock collapsed
to extremely low levels in the late 1980s
and early 1990s, and a moratorium oncommercial ﬁshing was declared in June
1992. A small commercial inshore ﬁshery
was reintroduced in 1998, but catch
rates declined and the ﬁshery was closed
indeﬁnitely in 2003.

900 000
800 000
700 000
600 000
500 000
400 000
300 000
200 000
100 000
0
Source: Millennium Ecosystem Assessment

The number of both ﬂoods and ﬁres has increased signiﬁcantly, in part due to ecosystem changes, in the past 50
years. Examples are the increased susceptibility of coastal
populations to tropical storms when mangrove forests
are cleared and the increase in downstream ﬂooding that
followed land use changes in the upper Yangtze river(C.SDM). Annual economic losses from extreme events
increased tenfold from the 1950s to approximately $70
billion in 2003, of which natural catastrophes—ﬂoods,
ﬁres, storms, drought, and earthquakes—accounted for
84% of insured losses.
■ Signiﬁcant investments are often needed to restore or maintainnonmarketed ecosystem services.
■ In South Africa, invasive tree species threaten both native
species and water ﬂows by encroaching into natural habitats, with serious impacts for economic growth and humanwell-being. In response, the South African government
established the “Working for Water Programme.” Between
1995 and 2001 the program invested $131 million (at2001 exchange rates) in clearing programs to control theinvasive species.
■

58 Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s

The state of Louisiana has put in place a $14-billion wetland restoration plan to protect 10,000 square kilometers ofmarsh, swamp, and barrier islands in part to reduce storm
surges generated by hurricanes.
Although degradation of ecosystem services could be signiﬁcantly slowed or reversed if the full economic value of the services were taken into account in decision-making, economic
considerations alone would likely lead to lower levels of biodiversity (medium certainty) (CWG). Although most or all biodiversity has some economic value (the option value of any species
is always greater than zero), that does not mean that the protection of all biodiversity is always economically justiﬁed. Other
utilitarian beneﬁts often “compete” with the beneﬁts of maintaining greater diversity. For example, many of the steps taken toincrease the production of ecosystem services involve the simpliﬁcation of natural systems. (Agriculture, for instance, typicallyhas involved the replacement of relatively diverse systems withmore simpliﬁed production systems.) And protecting some otherecosystem services may not necessarily require the conservationof biodiversity. (For example, a forested watershed could provide
clean water whether it was covered in a diverse native forest or ina single-species plantation.) Ultimately, the level of biodiversitythat survives on Earth will be determined not just by utilitarianconsiderations but to a signiﬁcant extent by ethical concerns,
including considerations of the intrinsic values of species.
■Even wealthy populations cannot be fully insulated from thedegradation of ecosystem services (CWG). The degradation of
ecosystem services inﬂuences human well-being in industrial
regions as well as wealthy populations in developing countries.
■ The physical, economic, or social impacts of ecosystemservice degradation may cross boundaries. (See Figure 3.5.)
Land degradation and ﬁres in poor countries, for example,
have contributed to air quality degradation (dust andsmoke) in wealthy ones.
■ Degradation of ecosystem services exacerbates poverty indeveloping countries, which can affect neighboring industrial countries by slowing regional economic growth andcontributing to the outbreak of conﬂicts or the migrationof refugees.
■ Changes in ecosystems that contribute to greenhouse gas
emissions contribute to global climate changes that affectall countries.
■ Many industries still depend directly on ecosystem services.
The collapse of ﬁsheries, for example, has harmed many
communities in industrial countries. Prospects for theforest, agriculture, ﬁshing, and ecotourism industries are
all directly tied to ecosystem services, while other sectors
such as insurance, banking, and health are strongly, if lessdirectly, inﬂuenced by changes in ecosystem services.
■ Wealthy populations are insulated from the harmful effects
of some aspects of ecosystem degradation, but not all.
For example, substitutes are typically not available when
cultural services are lost.
While traditional natural resource sectors such as agriculture,
forestry, and ﬁsheries are still important in industrial-country
economies, the relative economic and political signiﬁcance ofother sectors has grown as a result of the ongoing transition
from agricultural to industrial and service economies (S7). Overthe past two centuries, the economic structure of the world’s largest economies has shifted signiﬁcantly from agricultural production to industry and, in particular, to service industries. (SeeFigure 3.6.) These changes increase the relative signiﬁcance of
the industrial and service sectors (using conventional economic
measures that do not factor in nonmarketed costs and beneﬁts) incomparison to agriculture, forestry, and ﬁsheries, although natural
resource–based sectors often still dominate in developing countries. In 2000, agriculture accounted for 5% of gross world product, industry 31%, and service industries 64%. At the same time,the importance of other nonmarketed ecosystem services hasgrown, although many of the beneﬁts provided by these services
are not captured in national economic statistics. The economic
value of water from forested ecosystems near urban populations,for example, now sometimes exceeds the value of timber in thoseecosystems. Economic and employment contributions from ecotourism, recreational hunting, and ﬁshing have all grown.
Increased trade has often helped meet growing demand forecosystem services such as grains, ﬁsh, and timber in regions
where their supply is limited. While this lessens pressures on

Figure 3.5. Dust Cloud off the Northwest Coastof Africa, March 6, 2004

In this image, the storm covers about one ﬁfth of Earth’s
circumference. The dust clouds travel thousands of miles and fertilize
the water off the west coast of Florida with iron. This has been linked toblooms of toxic algae in the region and respiratory problems in North
America and has affected coral reefs in the Caribbean. Degradation ofdrylands exacerbates problems associated with dust storms.

Source: National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Earth Observatory

ecosystem services within the importing region, it increases
pressures in the exporting region. Fish products are heavily
traded, and approximately 50% of exports are from developing
countries. Exports from these nations and the Southern Hemisphere presently offset much of the shortfall of supply in European, North American, and East Asian markets (C18.ES). Trade
has increased the quantity and quality of ﬁsh supplied to wealthy
countries, in particular the United States, those in Europe, andJapan, despite reductions in marine ﬁsh catch (C18.4.1).
The value of international trade in forest products has
increased much faster than increases in harvests. (Roundwood
harvests grew by 60% between 1961 and 2000, while the valueof international timber trade increased twenty-ﬁve-fold (C9.ES).)The United States, Germany, Japan, United Kingdom, and Italy
were the destination of more than half of the imports in 2000,
while Canada, United States, Sweden, Finland, and Germany
account for more than half of the exports.
Trade in commodities such as grain, ﬁsh, and timber is accompanied by a “virtual trade” in other ecosystem services that are
required to support the production of these commodities.

Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s 59

Figure 3.6. Changes in Economic Structure for Selected Countries. This indicates the share of national GDP

for different sectors between 1820 and 1992. (S7 Fig 7.3)

100

100

100

90

90

90

80

80

80

70

70

70

60

60

60

50

50

50

40

40

40

30

30

30

20

20

20

10

10

10

0

0

0
Source: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

Globally, the international virtual water trade in crops has been
estimated between 500 and 900 cubic kilometers per year, and
130–150 cubic kilometers per year is traded in livestock and livestock products. For comparison, current rates of water consumption for irrigation total 1,200 cubic kilometers per year (C7.3.2).
Changes in ecosystem services affect people living in urban
ecosystems both directly and indirectly. Likewise, urban populations have strong impacts on ecosystem services both in thelocal vicinity and at considerable distances from urban centers(C27). Almost half of the world’s population now lives in urban
areas, and this proportion is growing. Urban development often
threatens the availability of water, air and water quality, waste
processing, and many other qualities of the ambient environmentthat contribute to human well-being, and this degradation isparticularly threatening to vulnerable groups such as poor people.
A wide range of ecosystem services are still important to livelihoods. For example, agriculture practiced within urban boundaries contributes to food security in urban sub-Saharan Africa.

60 Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s

Urban populations affect distant ecosystems through trade andconsumption and are affected by changes in distant ecosystems
that affect the local availability or price of commodities, air orwater quality, or global climate, or that affect socioeconomic conditions in those countries in ways that inﬂuence the economy,
demographic, or security situation in distant urban areas.
Spiritual and cultural values of ecosystems are as importantas other services for many local communities. Human cultures,
knowledge systems, religions, heritage values, and social interactions have always been inﬂuenced and shaped by the nature of
the ecosystem and ecosystem conditions in which culture isbased. People have beneﬁted in many ways from cultural ecosystem services, including aesthetic enjoyment, recreation, artistic
and spiritual fulﬁllment, and intellectual development (C17.ES).
Several of the MA sub-global assessments highlighted the importance of these cultural services and spiritual beneﬁts to local communities (SG.SDM). For example, local villages in India preserve
selected sacred groves of forest for spiritual reasons, and urban
parks provide important cultural and recreational services in cities around the world.

Ecosystem Services, Millennium Development
Goals, and Poverty Reduction
The degradation of ecosystem services poses a signiﬁcantbarrier to the achievement of the Millennium Development
Goals and to the MDG targets for 2015. (See Box 3.2.) Manyof the regions facing the greatest challenges in achieving the
MDGs overlap with the regions facing the greatest problems
related to the sustainable supply of ecosystem services (R19.ES).
Among other regions, this includes sub-Saharan Africa, Central
Asia, and parts of South and Southeast Asia as well as someregions in Latin America. Sub-Saharan Africa has experienced
increases in maternal deaths and income poverty (those living on
less than $1 a day), and the number of people living in poverty
there is forecast to rise from 315 million in 1999 to 404 million
by 2015 (R19.1). Per capita food production has been declining
in southern Africa, and relatively little gain is projected in the
MA scenarios. Many of these regions include large areas ofdrylands, in which a combination of growing populations andland degradation are increasing the vulnerability of people toboth economic and environmental change. In the past 20 years,
these same regions have experienced some of the highest rates offorest and land degradation in the world.

Despite the progress achieved in increasing the production
and use of some ecosystem services, levels of poverty remain
high, inequities are growing, and many people still do not havea sufﬁcient supply of or access to ecosystem services (C5).
■ In 2001, some 1.1 billion people survived on less than $1
per day of income, most of them (roughly 70%) in rural
areas where they are highly dependent on agriculture, grazing, and hunting for subsistence (R19.2.1).
■ Inequality in income and other measures of human wellbeing has increased over the past decade (C5.ES). A childborn in sub-Saharan Africa is 20 times more likely to die
before age ﬁve than a child born in an industrial country,
and this ratio is higher than it was a decade ago. During the
1980s, only four countries experienced declines in theirrankings in the Human Development Index (an aggregate
measure of economic well-being, health, and education);
during the 1990s, 21 countries showed declines, and 14 ofthem were in sub-Saharan Africa.
■ Despite the growth in per capita food production in thepast four decades, an estimated 852 million people were
undernourished in 2000–02, up 37 million from 1997–99.
Of these, nearly 95% live in developing countries (C8.ES).

Box 3.2. Ecosystems and the Millennium Development Goals
The eight Millennium Development Goals
were endorsed by governments at the United
Nations in September 2000. The MDGs aim
to improve human well-being by reducing poverty, hunger, and child and maternal mortality; ensuring education for all; controlling andmanaging diseases; tackling gender disparity; ensuring sustainable development; andpursuing global partnerships. For each MDG,
governments have agreed to between 1 and8 targets (a total of 15 targets) that are to
be achieved by 2015. Slowing or reversing
the degradation of ecosystem services willcontribute signiﬁcantly to the achievement ofmany of the MDGs.
■ Poverty Eradication. Ecosystem services are a dominant inﬂuence on livelihoodsof most poor people. Most of the world’s
poorest people live in rural areas and arethus highly dependent, directly or indirectly,
on the ecosystem service of food production, including agriculture, livestock, andhunting (R19.2.1). Mismanagement of ecosystems threatens the livelihood of poor people and may threaten their survival (C5.ES).
Poor people are highly vulnerable to changes
in watershed services that affect the quality or availability of water, loss of ecosystems such as wetlands, mangroves, or coral

reefs that affect the likelihood of ﬂood orstorm damage, or changes in climate regulating services that might alter regional climate.
Ecosystem degradation is often one of thefactors trapping people in cycles of poverty.
■ Hunger Eradication (R19.2.2). Althougheconomic and social factors are often the
primary determinants of hunger, food production remains an important factor, particularly among the rural poor. Food production
is an ecosystem service in its own right, andit also depends on watershed services, pollination, pest regulation, and soil formation.
Food production needs to increase to meetthe needs of the growing human population,
and at the same time the efﬁciency of foodproduction (the amount produced per unitof land, water, and other inputs) needs toincrease in order to reduce harm to other key
ecosystem services. Ecosystem condition,in particular climate, soil degradation, andwater availability, inﬂuences progress toward
this goal through its inﬂuence on crop yields
as well as through impacts on the availabilityof wild sources of food.
■ Reducing Child Mortality. Undernutritionis the underlying cause of a substantial proportion of all child deaths. Child mortality isalso strongly inﬂuenced by diseases associ-ated with water quality. Diarrhea is one of the
predominant causes of infant deaths worldwide. In sub-Saharan Africa, malaria additionally plays an important part in child mortality
in many countries of the region.
■ Combating Disease (R19.2.7). Human
health is strongly inﬂuenced by ecosystemservices related to food production, water
quality, water quantity, and natural hazard
regulation, and the role of ecosystem management is central to addressing some of
the most pressing global diseases such as
malaria. Changes in ecosystems inﬂuence
the abundance of human pathogens suchas malaria and cholera as well as the riskof emergence of new diseases. Malaria is
responsible for 11% of the disease burden in
Africa, and it is estimated that Africa’s GDP
could have been $100 billion larger (roughly
a 25% increase) in 2000 if malaria had been
eliminated 35 years ago (R16.1).
■ Environmental Sustainability. Achievement of this goal will require, at a minimum,
an end to the current unsustainable uses of
ecosystem services such as ﬁsheries andfresh water and an end to the degradation ofother services such as water puriﬁcation,
natural hazard regulation, disease regulation,
climate regulation, and cultural amenities.

Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s 61

South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, the regions with thelargest numbers of undernourished people, are also theregions where growth in per capita food production has
lagged the most. Most notably, per capita food production
has declined in sub-Saharan Africa (C28.5.1).
■ Some 1.1 billion people still lack access to improved watersupply and more than 2.6 billion have no access toimproved sanitation. Water scarcity affects roughly 1–2
billion people worldwide. Since 1960, the ratio of water
use to accessible supply has grown by 20% per decade(C7.ES, C7.2.3).
The degradation of ecosystem services is harming many of theworld’s poorest people and is sometimes the principal factor
causing poverty. This is not to say that ecosystem changes such asincreased food production have not also helped to lift hundreds ofmillions of people out of poverty. But these changes have harmed
many other communities, and their plight has been largely overlooked. Examples of these impacts include:■ Half of the urban population in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean suffers from one or more diseases
associated with inadequate water and sanitation (C.SDM).
Approximately 1.7 million people die annually as a result of
inadequate water, sanitation, and hygiene (C7.ES).
■ The declining state of capture ﬁsheries is reducing a cheap
source of protein in developing countries. Per capita ﬁshconsumption in developing countries, excluding China,
declined between 1985 and 1997 (C18.ES).
■ Desertiﬁcation affects the livelihoods of millions of people,
including a large portion of the poor in drylands (C22).
The pattern of “winners” and “losers” associated withecosystem changes, and in particular the impact of ecosystemchanges on poor people, women, and indigenous peoples, has
not been adequately taken into account in management decisions (R17). Changes in ecosystems typically yield beneﬁts forsome people and exact costs on others, who may either lose
access to resources or livelihoods or be affected by externalities
associated with the change. For several reasons, groups such as
the poor, women, and indigenous communities have tended tobe harmed by these changes.
■ Many changes have been associated with the privatizationof what were formerly common pool resources, and theindividuals who are dependent on those resources have thus
lost rights to them. This has been particularly the case forindigenous peoples, forest-dependent communities, andother groups relatively marginalized from political andeconomic sources of power.
■ Some of the people and places affected by changes in ecosystems and ecosystem services are highly vulnerable andpoorly equipped to cope with the major ecosystem changes
that may occur (C6.ES). Highly vulnerable groups include

62 Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s

those whose needs for ecosystem services already exceed the
supply, such as people lacking adequate clean water supplies
and people living in areas with declining per capita agricultural production. Vulnerability has also been increased by
the growth of populations in ecosystems at risk of disasters
such as ﬂoods or drought, often due to inappropriate policies that have encouraged this growth. Populations are
growing in low-lying coastal areas and dryland ecosystems.
In part due to the growth in these vulnerable populations,the number of natural disasters (ﬂoods, droughts, earthquakes, and so on) requiring international assistance has
quadrupled over the past four decades. Finally, vulnerability
has been increased when the resilience in either the social or
ecological system has been diminished, as for example
through the loss of drought-resistant crop varieties.
■ Signiﬁcant differences between the roles and rights of men
and women in many societies lead to women’s increased
vulnerability to changes in ecosystem services. Rural
women in developing countries are the main producers of
staple crops like rice, wheat, and maize (R6 Box 6.1).
Because the gendered division of labor within many societies places responsibility for routine care of the householdwith women, even when women also play important roles
in agriculture, the degradation of ecosystem services such as
water quality or quantity, fuelwood, agricultural or rangeland productivity often results in increased labor demands
on women. This can affect the larger household by diverting time from food preparation, child care, education ofchildren, and other beneﬁcial activities (C6.3.3).Yet genderbias persists in agricultural policies in many countries, andrural women involved in agriculture tend to be the last to
beneﬁt from—or in some cases are negatively affected by—
development policies and new technologies.
■ The reliance of the rural poor on ecosystem services is rarely
measured and thus typically overlooked in national statistics and in poverty assessments, resulting in inappropriate
strategies that do not take into account the role of the environment in poverty reduction. For example, a recent study
that synthesized data from 17 countries found that 22% ofhousehold income for rural communities in forested
regions comes from sources typically not included innational statistics, such as harvesting wild food, fuelwood,
fodder, medicinal plants, and timber. These activities generated a much higher proportion of poorer families’ total
income than wealthy families’—income that was of particular signiﬁcance in periods of both predictable and unpredictable shortfalls in other livelihood sources (R17).
Poor people have historically lost access to ecosystem services
disproportionately as demand for those services has grown.
Coastal habitats are often converted to other uses, frequently foraquaculture ponds or cage culturing of highly valued species suchas shrimp and salmon. Despite the fact that the area is still used
for food production, local residents are often displaced, and thefood produced is usually not for local consumption but forexport (C18.4.1). Many areas where overﬁshing is a concern are
also low-income, food-deﬁcit countries. For example, signiﬁcantquantities of ﬁsh are caught by large distant water ﬂeets in the
exclusive economic zones of Mauritania, Senegal, Gambia,
Guinea Bissau, and Sierra Leone. Much of the catch is exported
or shipped directly to Europe, while compensation for access isoften low compared with the value of the product landed overseas. These countries do not necessarily beneﬁt through increased
ﬁsh supplies or higher government revenues when foreign distantwater ﬂeets ply their waters (C18.5.1).
Diminished human well-being tends to increase immediate
dependence on ecosystem services, and the resultant additionalpressure can damage the capacity of those ecosystems to deliver
services (SG3.ES). As human well-being declines, the options
available to people that allow them to regulate their use of natural resources at sustainable levels decline as well. This in turnincreases pressure on ecosystem services and can create a downward spiral of increasing poverty and further degradation of ecosystem services.
Dryland ecosystems tend to have the lowest levels of humanwell-being (C5.3.3). Drylands have the lowest per capita GDP
and the highest infant mortality rates of all of the MA systems
Nearly 500 million people live in rural areas in dry and semiarid
lands, mostly in Asia and Africa but also in regions of Mexicoand northern Brazil (C5 Box 5.2). The small amount of precipitation and its high variability limit the productive potential of
drylands for settled farming and nomadic pastoralism, and many

ways of expanding production (such as reducing fallow periods,
overgrazing pasture areas, and cutting trees for fuelwood) resultin environmental degradation. The combination of high variability in environmental conditions and relatively high levels of poverty leads to situations where human populations can be
extremely sensitive to changes in the ecosystem (although thepresence of these conditions has led to the development of very
resilient land management strategies). Once rainfall in the Sahelreverted to normal low levels after 1970, following favorable
rainfall from the 1950s to the mid-1960s that had attracted people to the region, an estimated 250,000 people died, along withnearly all their cattle, sheep, and goats (C5 Box 5.1).
Although population growth has historically been higher inhigh-productivity ecosystems or urban areas, during the 1990s
it was highest in less productive ecosystems (C5.ES, C5.3.4). In
that decade dryland systems (encompassing both rural and urban
regions of drylands) experienced the highest, and mountain systems the second highest, population growth rate of any of thesystems examined in the MA. (See Figure 3.7.) One factor thathas helped reduce relative population growth in marginal lands
has been migration of some people out of marginal lands to cities
or to agriculturally productive regions; today the opportunities
for such migration are limited due to a combination of factors,
including poor economic growth in some cities, tighter immigration restrictions in wealthy countries, and limited availability ofland in more productive regions.

Figure 3.7. Human Population Growth Rates, 1990–2000, and Per Capita GDP and Biological

Productivity in 2000 in MA Ecological Systems

Population growth
between 1990 and 2000

Net primary
productivity

Population growth
between 1990 and 2000

20

1.0

20

Gross domestic
product
dollars per capita
20 000

16

0.8

16

16 000

12

0.6

12

12 000

8

0.4

8

8 000

4

0.2

4

4 000

0.0

0

in percentage

0

CultivatedMountainDrylandkg / sq. meter/ year

CoastalIslandForest and woodland

Population growthin percentage

Polar

Net primary productivity

CultivatedMountainDrylandCoastal0IslandForest and woodland

Polar

Gross domestic productSources: Millennium Ecosystem Assessment

Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s 63

4. What are the most critical factors causing ecosystem changes?

Natural or human-induced factors that directly or indirectly
cause a change in an ecosystem are referred to as “drivers.”
A direct driver unequivocally inﬂuences ecosystem processes. An
indirect driver operates more diffusely, by altering one or more
direct drivers.
Drivers affect ecosystem services and human well-being atdifferent spatial and temporal scales, which makes both theirassessment and their management complex (SG7). Climatechange may operate on a global or a large regional spatial scale;political change may operate at the scale of a nation or a municipal district. Sociocultural change typically occurs slowly, on atime scale of decades (although abrupt changes can sometimes
occur, as in the case of wars or political regime changes), while
economic changes tend to occur more rapidly. As a result of thisspatial and temporal dependence of drivers, the forces thatappear to be most signiﬁcant at a particular location and time
may not be the most signiﬁcant over larger (or smaller) regions
or time scales.

Indirect Drivers
In the aggregate and at a global scale, there are ﬁve indirectdrivers of changes in ecosystems and their services: population
change, change in economic activity, sociopolitical factors, cultural factors, and technological change. Collectively these factors inﬂuence the level of production and consumption of
ecosystem services and the sustainability of production. Botheconomic growth and population growth lead to increased consumption of ecosystem services, although the harmful environmental impacts of any particular level of consumption depend on
the efﬁciency of the technologies used in the production of theservice. These factors interact in complex ways in different locations to change pressures on ecosystems and uses of ecosystemservices. Driving forces are almost always multiple and interactive, so that a one-to-one linkage between particular driving
forces and particular changes in ecosystems rarely exists. Even so,changes in any one of these indirect drivers generally result inchanges in ecosystems. The causal linkage is almost always highly
mediated by other factors, thereby complicating statements of
causality or attempts to establish the proportionality of various
contributors to changes. There are ﬁve major indirect drivers:■ Demographic Drivers: Global population doubled in the past
40 years and increased by 2 billion people in the last 25 years,
reaching 6 billion in 2000 (S7.2.1). Developing countries haveaccounted for most recent population growth in the past quartercentury, but there is now an unprecedented diversity of demographic patterns across regions and countries. Some high-income
countries such as the United States are still experiencing highrates of population growth, while some developing countries
such as China, Thailand, and North and South Korea have very

64 Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s

low rates. In the United States, high population growth is due
primarily to high levels of immigration. About half the people in
the world now live in urban areas (although urban areas coverless than 3% of the terrestrial surface), up from less than 15% at
the start of the twentieth century (C27.1). High-income countries typically have populations that are 70–80% urban. Somedeveloping-country regions, such as parts of Asia, are still largely
rural, while Latin America, at 75% urban, is indistinguishable
from high-income countries in this regard (S7.2.1).
■ Economic Drivers: Global economic activity increased nearlysevenfold between 1950 and 2000 (S7.SDM). With rising per
capita income, the demand for many ecosystem services grows. At
the same time, the structure of consumption changes. In the caseof food, for example, as income grows the share of additional
income spent on food declines, the importance of starchy staples(such as rice, wheat, and potatoes) declines, diets include morefat, meat and ﬁsh, and fruits and vegetables, and the proportionate consumption of industrial goods and services rises (S7.2.2).
In the late twentieth century, income was distributed unevenly,
both within countries and around the world. The level of percapita income was highest in North America, Western Europe,
Australasia, and Northeast Asia, but both GDP growth rates andper capita GDP growth rates were highest in South Asia, China,
and parts of South America (S7.2.2). (See Figures 4.1 and 4.2.)
Growth in international trade ﬂows has exceeded growth inglobal production for many years, and the differential may be
growing. In 2001, international trade in goods was equal to 40%
of gross world product. (S7.2.2).
Taxes and subsidies are important indirect drivers of ecosystemchange. Fertilizer taxes or taxes on excess nutrients, for example,
provide an incentive to increase the efﬁciency of the use of fertilizer applied to crops and thereby reduce negative externalities.
Currently, many subsidies substantially increase rates of resource
consumption and increase negative externalities. Annual subsidies to conventional energy, which encourage greater use of fossil
fuels and consequently emissions of greenhouse gases, are estimated to have been $250–300 billion in the mid-1990s (S7.ES).
The 2001–03 average subsidies paid to the agricultural sectors ofOECD countries were over $324 billion annually (S7.ES),
encouraging greater food production and associated water consumption and nutrient and pesticide release. At the same time,
many developing countries also have signiﬁcant agricultural production subsidies.
■ Sociopolitical Drivers: Sociopolitical drivers encompass theforces inﬂuencing decision-making and include the quantity of
public participation in decision-making, the groups participatingin public decision-making, the mechanisms of dispute resolution,
the role of the state relative to the private sector, and levels of
education and knowledge (S7.2.3). These factors in turn inﬂuence the institutional arrangements for ecosystem management,
as well as property rights over ecosystem services. Over the pastFigure 4.1. GDP Average Annual Growth, 1990–2003 (S7 Fig 7.6b)
Average annual percentage growth rate of GDP at market prices based on constant local currency. Dollar ﬁgures for GDP are converted fromdomestic currencies using 1995 ofﬁcial exchange rates. GDP is the sum of gross value added by all resident producers in the economy plus any
product taxes and minus any subsidies not included in the value of the products. It is calculated without making deductions for depreciation of
fabricated assets or for depletion and degradation of natural resources.

PACIFICOCEANPACIFICOCEAN

ATLANTIC

INDIAN

OCEAN

OCEAN

50 years there have been signiﬁcant changes in sociopoliticaldrivers. There is a declining trend in centralized authoritarian
governments and a rise in elected democracies. The role ofwomen is changing in many countries, average levels of formal
education are increasing, and there has been a rise in civil society(such as increased involvement of NGOs and grassroots organizations in decision-making processes). The trend toward democratic institutions has helped give power to local communities,
especially women and resource-poor households (S7.2.3). There
has been an increase in multilateral environmental agreements.
The importance of the state relative to the private sector—as a
supplier of goods and services, as a source of employment, and asa source of innovation—is declining.
■ Cultural and Religious Drivers: To understand culture as adriver of ecosystem change, it is most useful to think of it as thevalues, beliefs, and norms that a group of people share. In thissense, culture conditions individuals’ perceptions of the world,
inﬂuences what they consider important, and suggests whatcourses of action are appropriate and inappropriate (S7.2.4).
Broad comparisons of whole cultures have not proved useful
because they ignore vast variations in values, beliefs, and norms
within cultures. Nevertheless, cultural differences clearly haveimportant impacts on direct drivers. Cultural factors, for example, can inﬂuence consumption behavior (what and how muchpeople consume) and values related to environmental stewardship, and they may be particularly important drivers of environmental change.

Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s 65

Figure 4.2. Per Capita GDP Average Annual Growth, 1990–2003 (S7 Fig 7.6a)
Average annual percentage growth rate of GDP per capita at market prices based on constant local currency. Dollar ﬁgures for GDP are converted
from domestic currencies using 1995 ofﬁcial exchange rates. GDP is the sum of gross value added by all resident producers in the economy plus
any product taxes and minus any subsidies not included in the value of the products. It is calculated without making deductions for depreciation of
fabricated assets or for depletion and degradation of natural resources.

PACIFICOCEANPACIFICOCEAN

ATLANTIC

INDIAN

OCEAN

OCEAN

■ Science and Technology: The development and diffusion of sci-

entiﬁc knowledge and technologies that exploit that knowledge
has profound implications for ecological systems and human wellbeing. The twentieth century saw tremendous advances in understanding how the world works physically, chemically, biologically,and socially and in the applications of that knowledge to humanendeavors. Science and technology are estimated to haveaccounted for more than one third of total GDP growth in the
United States from 1929 to the early 1980s, and for 16–47% of
GDP growth in selected OECD countries in 1960–95 (S7.2.5).
The impact of science and technology on ecosystem services ismost evident in the case of food production. Much of the increase

66 Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i sin agricultural output over the past 40 years has come from anincrease in yields per hectare rather than an expansion of area
under cultivation. For instance, wheat yields rose 208%, rice
yields rose 109%, and maize yields rose 157% in the past 40 years
in developing countries (S7.2.5). At the same time, technologicaladvances can also lead to the degradation of ecosystem services.
Advances in ﬁshing technologies, for example, have contributed
signiﬁcantly to the depletion of marine ﬁsh stocks.
Consumption of ecosystem services is slowly being decoupled from economic growth. Growth in the use of ecosystemservices over the past ﬁve decades was generally much less than
the growth in GDP. This change reﬂects structural changes in
economies, but it also results from new technologies and new
management practices and policies that have increased the efﬁciency with which ecosystem services are used and provided

substitutes for some services. Even with this progress, though, theabsolute level of consumption of ecosystem services continues togrow, which is consistent with the pattern for the consumptionof energy and materials such as metals: in the 200 years forwhich reliable data are available, growth of consumption ofenergy and materials has outpaced increases in materials andenergy efﬁciency, leading to absolute increases of materials andenergy use (S7.ES).
Global trade magniﬁes the effect of governance, regulations,and management practices on ecosystems and their services,enhancing good practices but worsening the damage caused bypoor practices (R8, S7). Increased trade can accelerate degradation of ecosystem services in exporting countries if their policy,
regulatory, and management systems are inadequate. At the sametime, international trade enables comparative advantages to be
exploited and accelerates the diffusion of more-efﬁcient technologies and practices. For example, the increased demand forforest products in many countries stimulated by growth in forest
products trade can lead to more rapid degradation of forests incountries with poor systems of regulation and management,
but can also stimulate a “virtuous cycle” if the regulatory framework is sufﬁciently robust to prevent resource degradation while
trade, and proﬁts, increase. While historically most trade related
to ecosystems has involved provisioning services such as food,timber, ﬁber, genetic resources, and biochemicals, one regulating
service—climate regulation, or more speciﬁcally carbon sequestration—is now also traded internationally.
Urban demographic and economic growth has been increasing pressures on ecosystems globally, but afﬂuent rural and suburban living often places even more pressure on ecosystems(C27.ES). Dense urban settlement is considered to be less environmentally burdensome than urban and suburban sprawl. And
the movement of people into urban areas has signiﬁcantly lessened pressure on some ecosystems and, for example, has led to thereforestation of some parts of industrial countries that had been
deforested in previous centuries. At the same time, urban centers
facilitate human access to and management of ecosystem services
through, for example, economies of scale related to the construction of piped water systems in areas of high population density.

Direct Drivers
Most of the direct drivers of change in ecosystems and biodiversity currently remain constant or are growing in intensity inmost ecosystems. (See Figure 4.3.) The most important directdrivers of change in ecosystems are habitat change (land usechange and physical modiﬁcation of rivers or water withdrawal
from rivers), overexploitation, invasive alien species, pollution,and climate change.
For terrestrial ecosystems, the most important direct drivers ofchange in ecosystem services in the past 50 years, in the aggregate, have been land cover change (in particular, conversion tocropland) and the application of new technologies (which havecontributed signiﬁcantly to the increased supply of services suchas food, timber, and ﬁber) (CWG, S7.2.5, SG8.ES). In 9 of the
14 terrestrial biomes examined in the MA, between one half andone ﬁfth of the area has been transformed, largely to croplands(C4.ES). Only biomes relatively unsuited to crop plants, such as
deserts, boreal forests, and tundra, have remained largely untransformed by human action. Both land cover changes and the management practices and technologies used on lands may cause majorchanges in ecosystem services. New technologies have resulted insigniﬁcant increases in the supply of some ecosystem services, suchas through increases in agricultural yield. In the case of cereals, forexample, from the mid-1980s to the late 1990s the global area
under cereals fell by around 0.3% a year, while yields increased byabout 1.2% a year (C26.4.1).
For marine ecosystems and their services, the most important
direct driver of change in the past 50 years, in the aggregate, hasbeen ﬁshing (C18). At the beginning of the twenty-ﬁrst century,
the biological capability of commercially exploited ﬁsh stocks
was probably at a historical low. FAO estimates that about half ofthe commercially exploited wild marine ﬁsh stocks for which
information is available are fully exploited and offer no scope forincreased catches, and a further quarter are over exploited.
(C8.2.2). As noted in Key Question 1, ﬁshing pressure is sostrong in some marine systems that the biomass of some targeted
species, especially larger ﬁshes, and those caught incidentally has
been reduced to one tenth of levels prior to the onset of industrial ﬁshing (C18.ES). Fishing has had a particularly signiﬁcant
impact in coastal areas but is now also affecting the open oceans.
For freshwater ecosystems and their services, depending on
the region, the most important direct drivers of change in thepast 50 years include modiﬁcation of water regimes, invasive
species, and pollution, particularly high levels of nutrient loading. It is speculated that 50% of inland water ecosystems (excluding large lakes and closed seas) were converted during thetwentieth century (C20.ES). Massive changes have been made inwater regimes: in Asia, 78% of the total reservoir volume wasconstructed in the last decade, and in South America almost
60% of all reservoirs have been built since the 1980s (C20.4.2).
The introduction of non-native invasive species is one of the
major causes of species extinction in freshwater systems. While
the presence of nutrients such as phosphorus and nitrogen isnecessary for biological systems, high levels of nutrient loading
cause signiﬁcant eutrophication of water bodies and contributeto high levels of nitrate in drinking water in some locations.
(The nutrient load refers to the total amount of nitrogen or
phosphorus entering the water during a given time.) Non-point
pollution sources such as storm water runoff in urban areas, poor
or nonexistent sanitation facilities in rural areas, and the ﬂushingof livestock manure by rainfall and snowmelt are also causes ofcontamination (C20.4.5). Pollution from point sources such as
mining has had devastating local and regional impacts on thebiota of inland waters.

Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s 67

Figure 4.3. Main Direct Drivers of Change in Biodiversity and Ecosystems (CWG)
The cell color indicates impact of each driver on biodiversity in each type of ecosystem over the past 50–100 years. High impact means that over thelast century the particular driver has signiﬁcantly altered biodiversity in that biome; low impact indicates that it has had little inﬂuence on biodiversity inthe biome. The arrows indicate the trend in the driver. Horizontal arrows indicate a continuation of the current level of impact; diagonal and vertical arrows
indicate progressively increasing trends in impact. Thus for example, if an ecosystem had experienced a very high impact of a particular driver in thepast century (such as the impact of invasive species on islands), a horizontal arrow indicates that this very high impact is likely to continue. This Figure
is based on expert opinion consistent with and based on the analysis of drivers of change in the various chapters of the assessment report of the MA
Condition and Trends Working Group. The Figure presents global impacts and trends that may be different from those in speciﬁc regions.

HabitatchangeClimatechangeInvasive
species

Overexploitation

Pollution(nitrogen,phosphorus)

BorealForestTemperate
TropicalTemperate grassland
Mediterranean

Dryland

Tropical grasslandand savanna
DesertInland water
CoastalMarineIslandMountain
Polar

Driver’s impact on biodiversity
over the last century

68 Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s

Driver’s current trends

Low

Decreasing impact

Moderate

Continuing impact

High

Increasing impact

Very highVery rapid increaseof the impact

Source: Millennium Ecosystem Assessment

Coastal ecosystems are affected by multiple direct drivers.
Fishing pressures in coastal ecosystems are compounded by awide array of other drivers, including land-, river-, and oceanbased pollution, habitat loss, invasive species, and nutrient loading. Although human activities have increased sediment ﬂows inrivers by about 20%, reservoirs and water diversions prevent
about 30% of sediments from reaching the oceans, resulting in a
net reduction of 10% in the sediment delivery to estuaries, which
are key nursery areas and ﬁshing grounds (C19.ES). Approximately 17% of the world lives within the boundaries of the MA
coastal system (up to an elevation of 50 meters above sea leveland no further than 100 kilometers from a coast), and approximately 40% live in the full area within 50 kilometers of a coast.
And the absolute number is increasing through a combination of
in-migration, high reproduction rates, and tourism (C.SDM).
Demand on coastal space for shipping, waste disposal, militaryand security uses, recreation, and aquaculture is increasing.
The greatest threat to coastal systems is the developmentrelated conversion of coastal habitats such as forests, wetlands,
and coral reefs through coastal urban sprawl, resort and port
development, aquaculture, and industrialization. Dredging,reclamation and destructive ﬁshing also account for widespread,effectively irreversible destruction. Shore protection structuresand engineering works (beach armoring, causeways, bridges, andso on), by changing coastal dynamics, have impacts extending
beyond their direct footprints. Nitrogen loading to the coastalzone has increased by about 80% worldwide and has driven
coral reef community shifts (C.SDM).
Over the past four decades, excessive nutrient loading has
emerged as one of the most important direct drivers of
ecosystem change in terrestrial, freshwater, and marine ecosystems. (See Table 4.1.) While the introduction of nutrients into
ecosystems can have both beneﬁcial effects (such as increased
crop productivity) and adverse effects (such as eutrophication ofinland and coastal waters), the beneﬁcial effects will eventuallyreach a plateau as more nutrients are added (that is, additional
inputs will not lead to further increases in crop yield), while theharmful effects will continue to grow.
Synthetic production of nitrogen fertilizer has been an important driver for the remarkable increase in food production thathas occurred during the past 50 years (S7.3.2). World consumption of nitrogenous fertilizers grew nearly eightfold between
1960 and 2003, from 10.8 million tons to 85.1 million tons.
As much as 50% of the nitrogen fertilizer applied may be lost to
the environment, depending on how well the application is
managed. Since excessive nutrient loading is largely the result ofapplying more nutrients than crops can use, it harms both farmincomes and the environment (S7.3.2).
Excessive ﬂows of nitrogen contribute to eutrophication of
freshwater and coastal marine ecosystems and acidiﬁcation of
freshwater and terrestrial ecosystems (with implications for biodiversity in these ecosystems). To some degree, nitrogen also plays a

Table 4.1. Increase in Nitrogen Fluxes in Rivers

to Coastal Oceans due to Human
Activities Relative to Fluxes prior to
the Industrial and Agricultural
Revolutions (R9 Table 9.1)

Labrador and Hudson’s Bay

no change

Southwestern Europe

3.7-foldGreat Lakes/St. Lawrence basin

4.1-fold

Baltic Sea watersheds

5-foldMississippi River basin

5.7-fold

Yellow River basin

10-fold

Northeastern United States

11-fold

North Sea watersheds

15-fold

Republic of Korea

17-foldrole in the creation of ground-level ozone (which leads to loss ofagricultural and forest productivity), destruction of ozone in thestratosphere (which leads to depletion of the ozone layer andincreased UV-B radiation on Earth, causing increased incidenceof skin cancer), and climate change. The resulting health effects
include the consequences of ozone pollution on asthma andrespiratory function, increased allergies and asthma due toincreased pollen production, the risk of blue-baby syndrome,
increased risk of cancer and other chronic diseases from nitrates
in drinking water, and increased risk of a variety of pulmonary
and cardiac diseases from production of ﬁne particles in theatmosphere (R9.ES).
Phosphorus application has increased threefold since 1960,
with a steady increase until 1990 followed by a leveling off at alevel approximately equal to applications in the 1980s. Whilephosphorus use has increasingly concentrated on phosphorusdeﬁcient soils, the growing phosphorus accumulation in soils
contributes to high levels of phosphorus runoff. As with nitrogenloading, the potential consequences include eutrophication ofcoastal and freshwater ecosystems, which can lead to degradedhabitat for ﬁsh and decreased quality of water for consumption
by humans and livestock.
Many ecosystem services are reduced when inland waters andcoastal ecosystems become eutrophic. Water from lakes thatexperience algal blooms is more expensive to purify for drinking
or other industrial uses. Eutrophication can reduce or eliminateﬁsh populations. Possibly the most apparent loss in services is theloss of many of the cultural services provided by lakes. Foul odorsof rotting algae, slime-covered lakes, and toxic chemicals produced by some blue-green algae during blooms keep people from

Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s 69

swimming, boating, and otherwise enjoying the aesthetic valueof lakes (S7.3.2).
Climate change in the past century has already had a measurable impact on ecosystems. Earth’s climate system has changed
since the preindustrial era, in part due to human activities, and it
is projected to continue to change throughout the twenty-ﬁrst
century. During the last 100 years, the global mean surface temperature has increased by about 0.6o Celsius, precipitation patterns have changed spatially and temporally, and global average
sea level rose by 0.1–0.2 meters (S7.ES). Observed changes inclimate, especially warmer regional temperatures, have alreadyaffected biological systems in many parts of the world. There
have been changes in species distributions, population sizes,

70 Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i sand the timing of reproduction or migration events, as well as anincrease in the frequency of pest and disease outbreaks, especiallyin forested systems. The growing season in Europe has lengthened over the last 30 years (R13.1.3). Although it is not possible
to determine whether the extreme temperatures were a result of
human-induced climate change, many coral reefs have undergone major, although often partially reversible, bleaching episodes when sea surface temperatures have increased during one
month by 0.5–1o Celsius above the average of the hottest
months. Extensive coral mortality has occurred with observed
local increases in temperature of 3o Celsius (R13.1.3).

5. How might ecosystems and their services change in the

future under various plausible scenarios?

T

he MA developed four global scenarios to explore plausible
futures for ecosystems and human well-being. (See Box5.1.) The scenarios were developed with a focus on conditions in
2050, although they include some information through the endof the century. They explored two global development paths,
one in which the world becomes increasingly globalized and theother in which it becomes increasingly regionalized, as well as
two different approaches to ecosystem management, one inwhich actions are reactive and most problems are addressed only
after they become obvious and the other in which ecosystemmanagement is proactive and policies deliberately seek to maintain ecosystem services for the long term:■ Global Orchestration: This scenario depicts a globally connected society that focuses on global trade and economic liberalization and takes a reactive approach to ecosystem problems butthat also takes strong steps to reduce poverty and inequality andto invest in public goods such as infrastructure and education.
Economic growth is the highest of the four scenarios, while this
scenario is assumed to have the lowest population in 2050.
■ Order from Strength: This scenario represents a regionalized
and fragmented world that is concerned with security and protection, emphasizes primarily regional markets, pays little attention to public goods, and takes a reactive approach to ecosystemproblems. Economic growth rates are the lowest of the scenarios(particularly low in developing countries) and decrease withtime, while population growth is the highest.
■ Adapting Mosaic: In this scenario, regional watershed-scaleecosystems are the focus of political and economic activity. Local
institutions are strengthened and local ecosystem management
strategies are common; societies develop a strongly proactive
approach to the management of ecosystems. Economic growth
rates are somewhat low initially but increase with time, and the
population in 2050 is nearly as high as in Order from Strength.
■ TechnoGarden: This scenario depicts a globally connectedworld relying strongly on environmentally sound technology,
using highly managed, often engineered, ecosystems to deliver
ecosystem services, and taking a proactive approach to the management of ecosystems in an effort to avoid problems. Economic
growth is relatively high and accelerates, while population in
2050 is in the mid-range of the scenarios.
The scenarios are not predictions; instead, they were developed
to explore the unpredictable and uncontrollable features ofchange in ecosystem services and a number of socioeconomic factors. No scenario represents business as usual, although all begin
from current conditions and trends. The future will represent a
mix of approaches and consequences described in the scenarios, aswell as events and innovations that have not yet been imagined.
No scenario is likely to match the future as it actually occurs.
These four scenarios were not designed to explore the entire rangeof possible futures for ecosystem services—other scenarios could be
developed with either more optimistic or more pessimistic outcomes for ecosystems, their services, and human well-being.
The scenarios were developed using both quantitative models
and qualitative analysis. For some drivers (such as land usechange and carbon emissions) and some ecosystem services (suchas water withdrawals and food production), quantitative projections were calculated using established, peer-reviewed global
models. Other drivers (such as economic growth and rates oftechnological change), ecosystem services (particularly supporting and cultural services such as soil formation and recreational
opportunities), and human well-being indicators (such as humanhealth and social relations) were estimated qualitatively. In general, the quantitative models used for these scenarios addressed
incremental changes but failed to address thresholds, risk ofextreme events, or impacts of large, extremely costly, or irreversible changes in ecosystem services. These phenomena wereaddressed qualitatively, by considering the risks and impacts oflarge but unpredictable ecosystem changes in each scenario.
(continued on page 74)

Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s 71

Box 5.1. MA Scenarios

Global Orchestration
The Global Orchestration scenario depicts
a globally connected society in which policy
reforms that focus on global trade and economic liberalization are used to reshape economies and governance, emphasizing the creation of markets that allow equitable participation and provide equitable access to goods andservices. These policies, in combination withlarge investments in global public health andthe improvement of education worldwide, generally succeed in promoting economic expansion and lifting many people out of poverty
into an expanding global middle class. Supranational institutions in this globalized scenario
are well placed to deal with global environmental problems such as climate change and ﬁsheries decline. However, the reactive approach to
ecosystem management makes people vulnerable to surprises arising from delayed action.
While the focus is on improving the well-beingof all people, environmental problems thatthreaten human well-being are only consideredafter they become apparent.
Growing economies, expansion of education, and growth of the middle class lead todemands for cleaner cities, less pollution, anda more beautiful environment. Rising income
levels bring about changes in global consumption patterns, boosting demand for ecosystem services, including agricultural products
such as meat, ﬁsh, and vegetables. Growing
demand for these services leads to declines
in other ones, as forests are converted into
cropped area and pasture and the services
they formerly provided decline. The problems

72 Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i srelated to increasing food production, suchas loss of wildlands, are not apparent to mostpeople who live in urban areas. They therefore
receive only limited attention.
Global economic expansion expropriates
or degrades many of the ecosystem services poor people once depended on for survival. While economic growth more than compensates for these losses in some regions
by increasing the ability to ﬁnd substitutes forparticular ecosystem services, in many otherplaces, it does not. An increasing number ofpeople are affected by the loss of basic ecosystem services essential for human life. Whilerisks seem manageable in some places, inother places there are sudden, unexpected
losses as ecosystems cross thresholds anddegrade irreversibly. Loss of potable watersupplies, crop failures, ﬂoods, species invasions, and outbreaks of environmental pathogens increase in frequency. The expansion ofabrupt, unpredictable changes in ecosystems,
many with harmful effects on increasingly
large numbers of people, is the key challenge
facing managers of ecosystem services.

Order from Strength
The Order from Strength scenario represents a regionalized and fragmented worldthat is concerned with security and protection, emphasizes primarily regional markets,and pays little attention to common goods.
Nations see looking after their own interests
as the best defense against economic insecurity, and the movement of goods, people, andinformation is strongly regulated and policed.
The role of government expands as oil compa-

nies, water utilities, and other strategic businesses are either nationalized or subjected
to more state oversight. Trade is restricted,
large amounts of money are invested in security systems, and technological change slows
due to restrictions on the ﬂow of goods andinformation. Regionalization exacerbates
global inequality.
Treaties on global climate change, international ﬁsheries, and trade in endangered species are only weakly and haphazardly implemented, resulting in degradation of the global
commons. Local problems often go unresolved, but major problems are sometimes
handled by rapid disaster relief to at least temporarily resolve the immediate crisis. Many
powerful countries cope with local problems byshifting burdens to other, less powerful ones,
increasing the gap between rich and poor. In
particular, natural resource–intensive industries
are moved from wealthier nations to poorer,
less powerful ones. Inequality increases considerably within countries as well.
Ecosystem services become more vulnerable, fragile, and variable in Order from
Strength. For example, parks and reserves
exist within ﬁxed boundaries, but climatechanges around them, leading to the unintended extirpation of many species. Conditions for crops are often suboptimal, and theability of societies to import alternative foods
is diminished by trade barriers. As a result,
there are frequent shortages of food andwater, particularly in poor regions. Low levelsof trade tend to restrict the number of invasions by exotic species; ecosystems are lessresilient, however, and invaders are therefore
more often successful when they arrive.
Adapting Mosaic
In the Adapting Mosaic scenario, regional
watershed-scale ecosystems are the focus ofpolitical and economic activity. This scenario
sees the rise of local ecosystem management
strategies and the strengthening of local institutions. Investments in human and social capital are geared toward improving knowledge
about ecosystem functioning and management, which results in a better understanding of resilience, fragility, and local ﬂexibility of ecosystems. There is optimism that we
can learn, but humility about preparing for sur-of social and environmental problems, ranging
from urban poverty to agricultural water pollution. As more knowledge is collected fromsuccesses and failures, provision of many services improves.

prises and about our ability to know everything
about managing ecosystems.
There is also great variation among nations
and regions in styles of governance, including
management of ecosystem services. Someregions explore actively adaptive management, investigating alternatives through experimentation. Others use bureaucratically rigid
methods to optimize ecosystem performance.
Great diversity exists in the outcome of theseapproaches: some areas thrive, while others
develop severe inequality or experience ecological degradation. Initially, trade barriers forgoods and products are increased, but barriers for information nearly disappear (for those
who are motivated to use them) due to improving communication technologies and rapidly
decreasing costs of access to information.
Eventually, the focus on local governanceleads to failures in managing the global commons. Problems like climate change, marine
ﬁsheries, and pollution grow worse, and global
environmental problems intensify. Communities slowly realize that they cannot manage
their local areas because global and regional
problems are infringing on them, and they
begin to develop networks among communities, regions, and even nations to better manage the global commons. Solutions that wereeffective locally are adopted among networks.
These networks of regional successes areespecially common in situations where there
are mutually beneﬁcial opportunities for coordination, such as along river valleys. Sharing good solutions and discarding poor ones
eventually improves approaches to a variety

TechnoGarden
The TechnoGarden scenario depicts a globally connected world relying strongly ontechnology and highly managed, often engineered ecosystems to deliver ecosystem services. Overall efﬁciency of ecosystem service provision improves, but it is shadowedby the risks inherent in large-scale humanmade solutions and rigid control of ecosystems. Technology and market-oriented institutional reform are used to achieve solutions
to environmental problems. These solutions
are designed to beneﬁt both the economy andthe environment. These changes co-develop

with the expansion of property rights to ecosystem services, such as requiring people topay for pollution they create or paying people for providing key ecosystem services
through actions such as preservation of key
watersheds. Interest in maintaining, and evenincreasing, the economic value of these property rights, combined with an interest in learning and information, leads to a ﬂowering of
ecological engineering approaches for managing ecosystem services. Investment in green
technology is accompanied by a signiﬁcant
focus on economic development and education, improving people’s lives and helping themunderstand how ecosystems make their livelihoods possible.

A variety of problems in global agriculture
are addressed by focusing on the multifunctional aspects of agriculture and a global reduction of agricultural subsidies and trade barriers. Recognition of the role of agricultural diversiﬁcation encourages farms to produce a variety of ecological services rather than simply
maximizing food production. The combinationof these movements stimulates the growth of
new markets for ecosystem services, such as
tradable nutrient runoff permits, and the development of technology for increasingly sophisticated ecosystem management. Gradually, environmental entrepreneurship expands as newproperty rights and technologies co-evolve tostimulate the growth of companies and cooperatives providing reliable ecosystem services tocities, towns, and individual property owners.
Innovative capacity expands quickly indeveloping nations. The reliable provision of
ecosystem services as a component of economic growth, together with enhanced uptakeof technology due to rising income levels, lifts
many of the world’s poor into a global middle
class. Elements of human well-being associated with social relations decline in this scenario due to great loss of local culture, customs, and traditional knowledge and the weakening of civil society institutions as an increasing share of interactions take place over theInternet. While the provision of basic ecosystem services improves the well-being of theworld’s poor, the reliability of the services,
especially in urban areas, become more critical and is increasingly difﬁcult to ensure. Not
every problem has succumbed to technological innovation. Reliance on technological solutions sometimes creates new problems andvulnerabilities. In some cases, societies seemto be barely ahead of the next threat to ecosystem services. In such cases new problems
often seem to emerge from the last solution,and the costs of managing the environment
are continually rising. Environmental breakdowns that affect large numbers of people
become more common. Sometimes new problems seem to emerge faster than solutions.
The challenge for the future is to learn how toorganize socioecological systems so that ecosystem services are maintained without taxing society’s ability to implement solutions tonovel, emergent problems.

Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s 73

Projected Changes in Indirect
and Direct Drivers under MA Scenarios
In the four MA scenarios, during the ﬁrst half of the twentyﬁrst century the array of both indirect and direct drivers affecting ecosystems and their services is projected to remain largely
the same as over the last half-century, but the relative importance of different drivers will begin to change. Some factors(such as global population growth) will begin to decline inimportance and others (distribution of people, climate change,
and changes to nutrient cycles) will gain more importance. (SeeTables 5.1, 5.2, and 5.3.)
Statements of certainty associated with ﬁndings related to the
MA scenarios are conditional statements; they refer to level ofcertainty or uncertainty in the particular projection should that
scenario and its associated changes in drivers unfold. They do
not indicate the likelihood that any particular scenario and its
associated projection will come to pass. With that caveat inmind, the four MA scenarios describe these changes between
2000 and 2050 (or in some cases 2100):■ Population is projected to grow to 8.1–9.6 billion in 2050
(medium to high certainty) and to 6.8–10.5 billion in 2100,
depending on the scenario (S7.2.1). (See Figure 5.1.) The rate ofglobal population growth has already peaked, at 2.1% per year in
the late 1960s, and had fallen to 1.35% per year in 2000, when
global population reached 6 billion (S7.ES). Population growth
Figure 5.1. MA World Population Scenarios (S7 Fig 7.2)

14

12

10

8

6

4

2

0

74 Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i sover the next several decades is expected to be concentrated in
the poorest, urban communities in sub-Saharan Africa, SouthAsia, and the Middle East (S7.ES).
■ Per capita income is projected to increase two- to fourfold,depending on the scenario (low to medium certainty) (S7.2.2). Grossworld product is projected to increase roughly three to sixfold in
the different scenarios. Increasing income leads to increasing per
capita consumption in most parts of the world for most resources
and it changes the structure of consumption. For example, diets
tend to become higher in animal protein as income rises.
■ Land use change (primarily the continuing expansion of agriculture) is projected to continue to be a major direct driver of change
in terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems (medium to high certainty)(S9.ES). At the global level and across all scenarios, land usechange is projected to remain the dominant driver of biodiversity
change in terrestrial ecosystems, consistent with the pattern overthe past 50 years, followed by changes in climate and nitrogen
deposition (S10.ES). However, other direct drivers may be more
important than land use change in particular biomes. For example, climate change is likely to be the dominant driver of biodiversity change in tundra and deserts. Species invasions and water
extraction are important drivers for freshwater ecosystems.
■ Nutrient loading is projected to become an increasingly severe
problem, particularly in developing countries. Nutrient loadingalready has major adverse effects on freshwater ecosystems andcoastal regions in both industrial anddeveloping countries. These impacts
include toxic algae blooms, other humanhealth problems, ﬁsh kills, and damage tohabitats such as coral reefs. Three out of
the four MA scenarios project that the
global ﬂux of nitrogen to coastal ecosystems will increase by 10–20% by 2030
(medium certainty) (S9.3.7.2). (See Figure5.2.) River nitrogen will not change inmost industrial countries, while a 20–
30% increase is projected for developing
countries, particularly in Asia.
■ Climate change and its impacts (such assea level rise) are projected to have an increasing effect on biodiversity and ecosystem services (medium certainty) (S9.ES). Under thefour MA scenarios, global temperature is
expected to increase signiﬁcantly—1.5–
2.0o Celsius above preindustrial level in
2050 and 2.0–3.5o Celsius above it in
2100, depending on the scenario and using(continued on page 78)

Table 5.1. Main Assumptions Concerning Indirect and Direct Driving Forces Used in the MA Scenarios(S.SDM)

GlobalOrchestration

Order from
Strength
Industrial
Countriesa

Adapting
MosaicTechnoGarden

high fertility level;high mortality levels
until 2010 thenmedium by 2050;
low migration

medium fertility andmortality levels;
medium migration

Developing
Countriesa

Indirect Drivers
Demographics

high migration; low
fertility andmortality levels
2050 population:
8.1 billion

high fertility and mortality levels (especiallyin developing countries); low migration
2050 population: 9.6 billion

2050 population:
9.5 billion

Average income
growthhighmedium

GDP growth
rates/capita
per year until
2050

Global: 1995–2020:
2.4% per year

1995–2020: 1.4% per year

low

2050 population:
8.8 billion

similar to Order from
Strength but withincreasing growth
rates toward 2050

lower than Global
Orchestration,
but catching up
toward 2050

1995–2020:
1.5% per year

1995–2020:
1.9% per year

2020–2050:
1.9% per year

2020–2050:
2.5% per year

industrialized c.:
1995-2020:
2.0% per year

industrialized c.:
1995–2020:
2.3% per year

2020–2050:
1.7% per year

2020–2050:
1.9% per year

developing c.:
1995–2020:
3.8% per year

developing c.:
1995–2020:
2.8% per year

developing c.:
1995–2020:
3.2% per year

2020–2050:
4.8% per year

2020–2050:
3.5% per year

2020–2050:
4.3% per year

similar to today,then becomes moreequal

becomes more equal

2020–2050: 3.0%
per yearindustrialized c.:
1995–2020:
2.5% per year
2020–2050:
2.1% per year

2020–2050: 1.0% per year

1995–2020:
2.1% per year

1995–2020:
2.4% per year

2020–2050:
1.4% per year

2020–2050:
2.3% per year

Income distribution

becomes moreequal

similar to today

Investments into new
produced assets

highmediumlow

begins like Orderfrom Strength, thenincreases in tempo

highInvestments into
human capitalhighmediumlow

begins like Orderfrom Strength, thenincreases in tempo

mediumOverall trend intechnology advances

high

low

medium-low

medium in general;high for environmental
technology

International
cooperationstrongweak – international competition

weak – focus on
local environment

strongAttitude toward
environmental policies

reactivereactive

proactive – learning

proactive(continued on page 76)
Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s 75

Table 5.1. Main Assumptions Concerning Indirect and Direct Driving Forces Used in the MA Scenarios(S.SDM)

GlobalOrchestration

Order from
Strength
Industrial
Countriesa

Adapting
MosaicTechnoGarden

Developing
Countriesa

Indirect Drivers (continued)
Energy demand andlifestyle

Energy-intensive

regionalized assumptions

regionalized
assumptions

high level of energy
efﬁciency; saturationin energy use

Energy supply

market liberalization;
selects least-cost
options; rapid
technology change

focus on domestic energy resources

some preference
for clean energy
resources

preference forrenewable energy
resources and rapid
technology change

Climate policy

no

no

no

yes, aims at stabilization of CO2 - equivalentconcentration at
550 ppmv

Approach to achieving
sustainability

economic growthleads to sustainable
development

national-level policies; conservation;
reserves, parks

local-regional comanagement;
common-property
institutions

green-technology;
eco-efﬁciency;
tradable ecologicalproperty rights

Land use change

global forest loss
until 2025 slightly
below historic rate,stabilizes after 2025;~10% increase inarable land

global forest loss faster than historic rateuntil 2025; near current rate after 2025;~20% increase in arable land comparedwith 2000

global forest loss
until 2025 slightly
below historic rate,stabilizes after 2025;~10% increase inarable land

net increase in forest
cover globally until
2025; slow loss after
2025; ~9% increasein arable land

Greenhouse gas
emissions by 2050

CO2: 20.1 GtC-eq
CH4: 3.7 GtC-eq
N2O: 1.1 GtC-eq
other GHG:
0.7 GtC-eq

CO2: 15.4 GtC-eq
CH4: 3.3 GtC-eq
N2O: 1.1 GtC-eq
other GHG: 0.5 GtC-eq

CO2: 13.3 GtC-eq
CH4: 3.2 GtC-eq
N2O: 0.9 GtC-eq
other GHG:
0.6 GtC-eq

CO2: 4.7 GtC-eq
CH4: 1.6 GtC-eq
N2O: 0.6 GtC-eq
other GHG:
0.2 GtC-eq

Air pollution
emissionsSO2 emissions
stabilize; NOxemissions increase
from 2000 to 2050

both SO2 and NOx emissions increase
globally

SO2 emissions
decline; NOxemissions increase
slowlystrong reductions
in SO2 and NOx
emissions

Climate change

2.0oC in 2050 and
3.5oC in 2100 above
preindustrial

1.7oC in 2050 and 3.3oC in 2100 above
preindustrial

1.9oC in 2050 and
2.8oC in 2100 above
preindustrial

1.5oC in 2050 and
1.9oC in 2100 above
preindustrial

Nutrient loading

increase in N
transport in rivers

increase in N transport in rivers

increase in N
transport in rivers

decrease in N
transport in rivers

Direct Drivers

aThese categories refer to the countries at the beginning of the scenario; some countries may change categories during the course of the 50 years.

76 Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i sTable 5.2. Outcomes of Scenarios for Ecosystem Services in 2050 Compared with 2000 (S.SDM)
Deﬁnitions of “enhanced” and “degraded” are provided the note below.
GlobalOrchestration
Provisioning
Services

Order from Strength

Adapting Mosaic

TechnoGarden

Industrial
Countriesa

Developing
Countriesa

Industrial
Countriesa

Developing
Countriesa

Industrial
Countriesa

Developing
Countriesa

Industrial
Countriesa

Developing
Countriesa

Food (extent to which
demand is met)

















Fuel

















Genetic resources

















Biochemicals/
pharmaceutical
discoveries

















Ornamental resources













Fresh water




















































Regulating Services
Air quality regulation
Climate regulation
Water regulation

































































































Spiritual/religious
values

















Aesthetic values

















Recreation andecotourism

















































Erosion control
Water puriﬁcation
Disease control:
human
Disease control:
pests
Pollination
Storm protection

Cultural Services

Cultural diversity
Knowledge systems(diversity and memory)

Legend:  = increase,  = remains the same as in 2000,  = decrease
Note: For provisioning services, we deﬁne enhancement to mean increased production of the service through changes in area over which the service is provided (e.g., spread of
agriculture) or increased production per unit area. We judge the production to be degraded if the current use exceeds sustainable levels. For regulating services, enhancement
refers to a change in the service that leads to greater beneﬁts for people (e.g., the service of disease regulation could be improved by eradication of a vector known to transmit
a disease to people). Degradation of regulating services means a reduction in the beneﬁts obtained from the service, either through a change in the service (e.g., mangrove
loss reducing the storm protection beneﬁts of an ecosystem) or through human pressures on the service exceeding its limits (e.g., excessive pollution exceeding the capabilityof ecosystems to maintain water quality). For cultural services, degradation refers to a change in the ecosystem features that decreases the cultural (recreational, aesthetic,
spiritual, etc.) beneﬁts provided by the ecosystem, while enhancement refers to a change that increases them.
aThese categories refer to the countries at the beginning of the scenario; some countries may change categories during the course of the 50 years.

Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s 77

Table 5.3. Outcomes of Scenarios for Human Well-being in 2050 Compared with 2000
Global Orchestration

Order from Strength

Adapting Mosaic

TechnoGarden

Industrial
Countriesa

Developing
Countriesa

Industrial
Countriesa

Developing
Countriesa

Industrial
Countriesa

Developing
Countriesa

Material well-being

















Health

















Security
















































Services

Social relations
Freedom and choice

Industrial
Countriesa

Developing
Countriesa

Legend:  = increase,  = remains the same as in 2000,  = decreasea

These categories refer to the countries at the beginning of the scenario; some countries may change categores during the course of 50 years.

Figure 5.2. Comparison of Global River Nitrogen

Export from Natural Ecosystems,
Agricultural Systems, and Sewage
Efﬂuents, 1975 and 1990, with Model
Results for the MA Scenarios in 2030

(S9 Fig 9.21)

Million tons of nitrogen per year
60

50
Level in 1990
40
Level in 1975
30

20

10

0

Global Order from Adapting
Orchestration Strength
MosaicTechnoGarden

Source: Millennium Ecosystem Assessment

78 Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i sa median estimate for climate sensitivity (2.5oC for a doubling of
the CO2 concentration) (medium certainty). The IPCC reported
a range of temperature increase for the scenarios used in the
Third Assessment Report of 2.0–6.4o Celsius compared with preindustrial levels, with about half of this range attributable to thedifferences in scenarios and the other half to differences in climate models. The smaller, somewhat lower, range of the MA scenarios is thus partly a result of using only one climate model(and one estimate of climate sensitivity) but also the result of
including climate policy responses in some scenarios as well as
differences in assumptions for economic and population growth.
The scenarios project an increase in global average precipitation(medium certainty), but some areas will become more arid whileothers will become more moist. Climate change will directly alter
ecosystem services, for example, by causing changes in the productivity and growing zones of cultivated and noncultivated vegetation. It is also projected to change the frequency of extreme
events, with associated risks to ecosystem services. Finally, it isprojected to indirectly affect ecosystem services in many ways,
such as by causing sea level to rise, which threatens mangroves
and other vegetation that now protect shorelines.
Climate change is projected to further adversely affect key
development challenges, including providing clean water, energy
services, and food; maintaining a healthy environment; and conserving ecological systems, their biodiversity, and their associatedecological goods and services (R13.1.3).
■ Climate change is projected to exacerbate the loss of biodiversity and increase the risk of extinction for many species,
especially those already at risk due to factors such as low
population numbers, restricted or patchy habitats, andlimited climatic ranges (medium to high certainty).
■ Water availability and quality are projected to decrease inmany arid and semiarid regions (high certainty).
■ The risk of ﬂoods and droughts is projected to increase(high certainty).

Sea level is projected to rise by 8–88 centimeters.
The reliability of hydropower and biomass production is
projected to decrease in some regions (high certainty).
■ The incidence of vector-borne diseases such as malaria
and dengue and of waterborne diseases such as cholera is
projected to increase in many regions (medium to highcertainty), and so too are heat stress mortality and threatsof decreased nutrition in other regions, along with severe
weather traumatic injury and death (high certainty).
■ Agricultural productivity is projected to decrease in thetropics and sub-tropics for almost any amount of warming(low to medium certainty), and there are projected adverse
effects on ﬁsheries.
■ Projected changes in climate during the twenty-ﬁrst century
are very likely to be without precedent during at least thepast 10,000 years and, combined with land use change andthe spread of exotic or alien species, are likely to limit boththe capability of species to migrate and the ability of species
to persist in fragmented habitats.
■ By the end of the century, climate change and its impacts may
be the dominant direct drivers of biodiversity loss and the change inecosystem services globally (R13). Harm to biodiversity will growwith both increasing rates in change in climate and increasing
absolute amounts of change. For ecosystem services, some services in some regions may initially beneﬁt from increases in temperature or precipitation expected under climate scenarios, but
the balance of evidence suggests that there will be a signiﬁcant
net harmful impact on ecosystem services worldwide if global
mean surface temperature increases more than 2o Celsius above
preindustrial levels or at rates greater than 0.2o Celsius per decade(medium certainty). There is a wide band of uncertainty in theamount of warming that would result from any stabilized greenhouse gas concentration, but based on IPCC projections thiswould require an eventual CO2 stabilization level of less than
450 parts per million carbon dioxide (medium certainty).
This judgment is based on the evidence that an increase ofabout 2o Celsius above preindustrial levels in global mean surface
temperature would represent a transition between the negative
effects of climate change being felt in only some regions of theworld to most regions of the world. For example, below anincrease of about 2o Celsius, agricultural productivity is projected
to be adversely affected in the tropics and sub-tropics, but beneﬁcially affected in most temperate and high-latitude regions,whereas more warming than that is projected to have adverse
impacts on agricultural productivity in many temperate regions.
A 2o increase would have both positive and negative economic
impacts, but most people would be adversely affected—that is,there would be predominantly negative economic effects. It
would pose a risk to many unique and threatened ecologicalsystems and lead to the extinction of numerous species. And it
would lead to a signiﬁcant increase in extreme climatic eventsand adversely affect water resources in countries that are alreadywater-scarce or water-stressed and would affect human healthand property.
■■

Changes in Ecosystems
Rapid conversion of ecosystems is projected to continue under
all MA scenarios in the ﬁrst half of the twenty-ﬁrst century.
Roughly 10–20% (low to medium certainty) of current grasslandand forestland is projected to be converted to other uses between
now and 2050, mainly due to the expansion of agriculture and,secondarily, because of the expansion of cities and infrastructure(S9.ES). The biomes projected to lose habitat and local species at
the fastest rate in the next 50 years are warm mixed forests,
savannas, scrub, tropical forests, and tropical woodlands (S10.ES).
Rates of conversion of ecosystems are highly dependent on future
development scenarios and in particular on changes in population, wealth, trade, and technology.
Habitat loss in terrestrial environments is projected to accelerate decline in local diversity of native species in all four scenarios
by 2050 (high certainty) (S.SDM). Loss of habitat results in theimmediate extirpation of local populations and the loss of theservices that these populations provided.
The habitat losses projected in the MA scenarios will lead to
global extinctions as numbers of species approach equilibriumwith the remnant habitat (high certainty) (S.SDM, S10.ES). The
equilibrium number of plant species is projected to be reducedby roughly 10–15% as a result of habitat loss from 1970 to 2050
in the MA scenarios (low certainty). Other terrestrial taxonomic
groups are likely to be affected to a similar extent. The pattern of
extinction through time cannot be estimated with any precision,
because some species will be lost immediately when their habitat
is modiﬁed but others may persist for decades or centuries. Timelags between habitat reduction and extinction provide an opportunity for humans to deploy restoration practices that may rescue
those species that otherwise may be in a trajectory toward extinction. Signiﬁcant declines in freshwater ﬁsh species diversity arealso projected due to the combined effects of climate change,
water withdrawals, eutrophication, acidiﬁcation, and increased
invasions by nonindigenous species (low certainty). Rivers thatare expected to lose ﬁsh species are concentrated in poor tropicaland sub-tropical countries.

Changes in Ecosystem Services
and Human Well-being
In three of the four MA scenarios, ecosystem services show net
improvements in at least one of the three categories of provisioning, regulating, and cultural services (S.SDM). These three
categories of ecosystem services are all in worse condition in
2050 than they are today in only one MA scenario—Order from
Strength. (See Figure 5.3.) However, even in scenarios showing
improvement in one or more categories of ecosystem services,biodiversity loss continues at high rates.

Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s 79

Figure 5.3. Number of Ecosystem Services Enhanced or Degraded by 2050 in the Four MA Scenarios
The Figure shows the net change in the number of ecosystem services enhanced or degraded in the MA scenarios in each category of services forindustrial and developing countries expressed as a percentage of the total number of services evaluated in that category. Thus, 100% degradationmeans that all the services in the category were degraded in 2050 compared with 2000, while 50% improvement could mean that three out of six
services were enhanced and the rest were unchanged or that four out of six were enhanced and one was degraded. The total number of services
evaluated for each category was six provisioning services, nine regulating services, and ﬁve cultural services.
Changes in ecosystem services
in percentage
100

Global Orchestration

Order from Strength

80 Provisioning
IMPROVEMENT

Adapting Mosaic

Regulating Cultural
Provisioning

TechnoGarden
Provisioning
Regulating

60
40
20
0
– 20

DEGRADATION

Cultural

– 40
– 60
– 80

Regulating Cultural– 100

Industrial countries
Provisioning

CulturalDeveloping countries

Regulating

Source: Millennium Ecosystem Assessment

The following changes to ecosystem services and human wellbeing were common to all four MA scenarios and thus may belikely under a wide range of plausible futures (S.SDM):■ Human use of ecosystem services increases substantially under all
MA scenarios during the next 50 years. In many cases this is accompanied by degradation in the quality of the service and sometimes,
in cases where the service is being used unsustainably, a reductionin the quantity of the service available. (See Appendix A.) The
combination of growing populations and growing per capita consumption increases the demand for ecosystem services, including
water and food. For example, demand for food crops (measured intons) is projected to grow by 70–85% by 2050 (S9.4.1) and global
water withdrawals increase by 20–85% across the MA scenarios(S9 Fig 9.35). Water withdrawals are projected to increase signiﬁ-

80 Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i scantly in developing countries but to decline in OECD countries(medium certainty) (S.SDM). In some cases, this growth indemand will be met by unsustainable uses of the services, such as
through continued depletion of marine ﬁsheries. Demand isdampened somewhat by increasing efﬁciency in use of resources.
The quantity and quality of ecosystem services will change dramatically in the next 50 years as productivity of some services isincreased to meet demand, as humans use a greater fraction ofsome services, and as some services are diminished or degraded.
Ecosystem services that are projected to be further impaired byecosystem change include ﬁsheries, food production in drylands,
quality of fresh waters, and cultural services.
■ Food security is likely to remain out of reach for many people.
Child malnutrition will be difﬁcult to eradicate even by 2050
(low to medium certainty) and is projected to increase in someregions in some MA scenarios, despite increasing food supply
under all four scenarios (medium to high certainty) and more

diversiﬁed diets in poor countries (low to medium certainty)(S.SDM). Three of the MA scenarios project reductions in childundernourishment by 2050 of between 10% and 60%, but
undernourishment increases by 10% in Order from Strength (lowcertainty) (S9.4.1). (See Figure 5.4.) This is due to a combinationof factors related to food supply systems (inadequate investments
in food production and its supporting infrastructure resulting in
low productivity increases, varying trade regimes) and fooddemand and accessibility (continuing poverty in combination
with high population growth rates, lack of food infrastructure
investments).
■ Vast, complex changes with great geographic variability are
projected to occur in world freshwater resources and hence in theirprovisioning of ecosystem services in all scenarios (S.SDM). Climatechange will lead to increased precipitation over more than half ofEarth’s surface, and this will make more water available to society
and ecosystems (medium certainty). However, increased precipitation is also likely to increase the frequency of ﬂooding in many
areas (high certainty). Increases in precipitation will not be universal, and climate change will also cause a substantial decrease inprecipitation in some areas, with an accompanying decrease inwater availability (medium certainty). These areas could include
highly populated arid regions such as the Middle East and Southern Europe (low to medium certainty). While water withdrawals
decrease in most industrial countries, they are expected to increase
substantially in Africa and some other developing regions, alongwith wastewater discharges, overshadowing the possible beneﬁts
of increased water availability (medium certainty).
■ A deterioration of the services provided by freshwater resources(such as aquatic habitat, ﬁsh production, and water supply forhouseholds, industry, and agriculture) is expected in developing
countries under the scenarios that are reactive to environmental
problems (S9.ES). Less severe but still important declines are
expected in the scenarios that are more proactive about environmental problems (medium certainty).
■ Growing demand for ﬁsh and ﬁsh products leads to an increasing risk of a major and long-lasting collapse of regional marine ﬁsheries (low to medium certainty) (S.SDM). Aquaculture may relieve
some of this pressure by providing for an increasing fraction ofﬁsh demand. However, this would require aquaculture to reduce
its current reliance on marine ﬁsh as a feed source.
The future contribution of terrestrial ecosystems to the regulation of climate is uncertain (S9.ES). Carbon release or uptake
by ecosystems affects the CO2 and CH4 content of the atmosphere at the global scale and thereby affects global climate.
Currently, the biosphere is a net sink of carbon, absorbing about
1–2 gigatons a year, or approximately 20% of fossil fuel emissions. It is very likely that the future of this service will be greatly
affected by expected land use change. In addition, a higher atmospheric CO2 concentration is expected to enhance net productivity, but this does not necessarily lead to an increase in the carbon

sink. The limited understanding of soil respiration processes
generates uncertainty about the future of the carbon sink. Thereis medium certainty that climate change will increase terrestrial
ﬂuxes of CO2 and CH4 in some regions (such as in Arctic tundra).
Dryland ecosystems are particularly vulnerable to changes
over the next 50 years. The combination of low current levels ofhuman well-being (high rates of poverty, low per capita GDP,high infant mortality rates), a large and growing population, highvariability of environmental conditions in dryland regions, andhigh sensitivity of people to changes in ecosystem services meansthat continuing land degradation could have profoundly negative
impacts on the well-being of a large number of people in theseregions (S.SDM). Subsidies of food and water to people in vulnerable drylands can have the unintended effect of increasing therisk of even larger breakdowns of ecosystem services in futureyears. Local adaptation and conservation practices can mitigate
some losses of dryland ecosystem services, although it will be
difﬁcult to reverse trends toward loss of food production capacity, water supplies, and biodiversity in drylands.
Figure 5.4. Number of Undernourished Children

Projected in 2050 under MA Scenarios

Million undernourished children
200
180Current
level

160
140
120
100
80
60
40
20
0

GlobalOrder from
Orchestration Strength

Adapting
Mosaic TechnoGarden

Source: Millennium Ecosystem Assessment

Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s 81

relations, and material needs. If the same technologies are used
globally, however, local culture can be lost or undervalued. Highlevels of trade lead to more rapid spread of emergent diseases,
somewhat reducing the gains in health in all areas. Locallyfocused, learning-based approaches lead to the largest improvements in social relations.
Order from Strength, which focuses on reactive policies in aregionalized world, has the least favorable outcomes for humanwell-being, as the global distribution of ecosystem services andhuman resources that underpin human well-being are increasingly skewed. (See Figure 5.5.) Wealthy populations generally
meet most material needs but experience psychological unease.
Anxiety, depression, obesity, and diabetes have a greater impact
Figure 5.5. Net Change in Components of Human

Well-being between 2000 and 2050 under
MA Scenarios (Data from Table 5.3)

The Figure shows the number of components of human well-beingenhanced minus the number degraded for each scenario between
2000 and 2050 for industrial and developing countries. Thisqualitative assessment of status examined ﬁve components of humanwell-being: material well-being, health, security, good social relations,and freedom of choice and action.
Net change in components of human well-being
6

4

2

INCREASED

While human health improves under most MA scenarios,
under one plausible future health and social conditions in the
North and South could diverge (S11). In the more promising
scenarios related to health, the number of undernourishedchildren is reduced, the burden of epidemic diseases such as HIV/
AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis would be lowered, improved vaccine development and distribution could allow populations tocope comparatively well with the next inﬂuenza pandemic, andthe impact of other new diseases such as SARS would also be limited by well-coordinated public health measures.
Under the Order from Strength scenario, however, it is plausiblethat the health and social conditions for the North and South
could diverge as inequality increases and as commerce and scientiﬁc exchanges between industrial and developing countries
decrease. In this case, health in developing countries could
become worse, causing a negative spiral of poverty, declining
health, and degraded ecosystems. The increased population in
the South, combined with static or deteriorating nutrition, could
force increased contact between humans and nonagricultural
ecosystems, especially to obtain bushmeat and other forest goods.
This could lead to more outbreaks of hemorrhagic fever and zoonoses. It is possible, though with low probability, that a morechronic disease could cross from a nondomesticated animal species into humans, at ﬁrst slowly but then more rapidly colonizing
human populations.
Each scenario yields a different package of gains, losses, andvulnerabilities to components of human well-being in different
regions and populations (S.SDM). Actions that focus on
improving the lives of the poor by reducing barriers to international ﬂows of goods, services, and capital tend to lead to themost improvement in health and social relations for the currently
most disadvantaged people. But human vulnerability to ecological surprises is high. Globally integrated approaches that focus ontechnology and property rights for ecosystem services generally
improve human well-being in terms of health, security, social

Order from
Strength

0–4

DECREASED–2

GlobalOrchestration

Adapting
MosaicTechnoGarden

Industrial countries
Developing countries–6
Source: Millennium Ecosystem Assessment

82 Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s

on otherwise privileged populations in this scenario. Diseasecreates a heavy burden for disadvantaged populations.
Proactive or anticipatory management of ecosystems is generally advantageous in the MA scenarios, but it is particularly
beneﬁcial under conditions of changing or novel conditions(S.SDM). (See Table 5.4.) Ecological surprises are inevitablebecause of the complexity of the interactions and because oflimitations in current understanding of the dynamic propertiesof ecosystems. Currently well understood phenomena that were
surprises of the past century include the ability of pests to evolve
resistance to biocides, the contribution to desertiﬁcation ofcertain types of land use, biomagniﬁcation of toxins, and theincrease in vulnerability of ecosystem to eutrophication andunwanted species due to removal of predators. While we do notknow which surprises lie ahead in the next 50 years, we can becertain that there will be some.
In general, proactive action to manage systems sustainably
and to build resilience into systems will be advantageous, particularly when conditions are changing rapidly, when surprise
events are likely, or when uncertainty is high. This approachis beneﬁcial largely because the restoration of ecosystems or
ecosystem services following their degradation or collapse isgenerally more costly and time-consuming than preventing
degradation, if that is possible at all. Nevertheless, there arecosts and beneﬁts to both proactive and reactive approaches,as Table 5.4 indicated.

Table 5.4. Costs and Beneﬁts of Proactive as Contrasted with Reactive Ecosystem Management as

Revealed in the MA Scenarios (S.SDM)

Proactive Ecosystem Management
Payoffs beneﬁt from lower risk of unexpected losses of
ecosystem services, achieved through investment inmore efﬁcient use of resources (water, energy, fertilizer,etc.); more innovation of green technology; capacity toabsorb unexpected ﬂuctuations in ecosystem services;
adaptable management systems; and ecosystems
that are resilient and self-maintaining

Costs

Reactive Ecosystem Management
avoid paying for monitoring effort

do well under changing or novel conditions

do well under smoothly or incrementally changing conditions

build natural, social, and human capitalbuild manufactured, social, and human capital

technological solutions can create new problems

expensive unexpected events

costs of unsuccessful experiments

persistent ignorance (repeating the same mistakes)

costs of monitoring

lost option values

some short-term beneﬁts are traded for long-term beneﬁts

inertia of less ﬂexible and adaptable management of
infrastructure and ecosystems
loss of natural capital

Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s 83

6. What can be learned about the consequences of ecosystemchange for human well-being at sub-global scales?

T

he MA included a sub-global assessment component toassess differences in the importance of ecosystem services forhuman well-being around the world (SG.SDM). The Sub-global
Working Group included 33 assessments around the world. (SeeFigure 6.1.) These were designed to consider the importance of
ecosystem services for human well-being at local, national, andregional scales. The areas covered in these assessments range fromsmall villages in India and cities like Stockholm and São Paulo towhole countries like Portugal and large regions like southern
Africa. In a few cases, the sub-global assessments were designed
to cover multiple nested scales. For example, the Southern Africa

84 Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s

study included assessments of the entire region of Africa southof the equator, of the Gariep and Zambezi river basins in that
region, and of local communities within those basins. This
nested design was included as part of the overall design of the
MA to analyze the importance of scale on ecosystem services andhuman well-being and to study cross-scale interactions. Most
assessments, however, were conducted with a focus on the needsof users at a single spatial scale—a particular community, watershed, or region.
The scale at which an assessment is undertaken signiﬁcantly
inﬂuences the problem deﬁnition and the assessment results(SG.SDM). Findings of assessments done at different scales varied
due to the speciﬁc questions posed or the information analyzed.
Local communities are inﬂuenced by global, regional, and local
factors. Global factors include commodity prices (global trade
asymmetries that inﬂuence local production patterns, forinstance) and global climate change (such as sea level rise).
Regional factors include water supply regimes (safe piped water inrural areas), regional climate (desertiﬁcation), and geomorphological processes (soil erosion and degradation). Local factors include
market access (distance to market), disease prevalence (malaria,
for example), or localized climate variability (patchy thunderstorms). Assessments conducted at different scales tended to focus
on drivers and impacts most relevant at each scale, yielding different but complementary ﬁndings. This provides some of the beneﬁt of a multiscale assessment process, since each component
assessment provides a different perspective on the issues addressed.
Although there is overall congruence in the results fromglobal and sub-global assessments for services like water andbiodiversity, there are examples where local assessments showed
the condition was either better or worse than expected from theglobal assessment (SG.SDM). For example, the condition ofwater resources was signiﬁcantly worse than expected in places
like São Paulo and the Laguna Lake Basin in the Philippines.
There were more mismatches for biodiversity than for water provisioning because the concepts and measures of biodiversity weremore diverse in the sub-global assessments.
Drivers of change act in very distinct ways in different regions(SG7.ES). Though similar drivers might be present in various
assessments, their interactions—and thus the processes leading toecosystem change—differed signiﬁcantly from one assessment toanother. For example, although the Amazon, Central Africa, andSoutheast Asia in the Tropical Forest Margins assessment havethe same set of individual drivers of land use change (deforestation, road construction, and pasture creation), the interactions
among these drivers leading to change differ. Deforestation
driven by swidden agriculture is more widespread in upland andfoothill zones of Southeast Asia than in other regions. Road

Figure 6.1. MA Sub-global Assessments
Eighteen assessments were approved as components of the MA. Any institution or country was able to undertake an assessment as part of the
MA if it agreed to use the MA Conceptual Framework, to centrally involve the intended users as stakeholders and partners, and to meet a set ofprocedural requirements related to peer review, metadata, transparency, and intellectual property rights. The MA assessments were largely
self-funded, although planning grants and some core grants were provided to support some assessments. The MA also drew on information from
15 other sub-global assessments afﬁliated with the MA that met a subset of these criteria or were at earlier stages in development.

construction by the state followed by colonizing migrant settlers,
who in turn practice slash-and-burn agriculture, is most frequent
in lowland areas of Latin America, especially in the Amazon
Basin. Pasture creation for cattle ranching is causing deforestation almost exclusively in the humid lowland regions of mainland South America. The spontaneous expansion of smallholder
agriculture and fuelwood extraction for domestic uses are important causes of deforestation in Africa.
The assessments identiﬁed inequities in the distribution of
the costs and beneﬁts of ecosystem change, which are often
displaced to other places or future generations (SG.SDM). For
example, the increase in urbanization in countries like Portugal isgenerating pressures on ecosystems and services in rural areas.
The increase in international trade is also generating additionalpressures around the world, illustrated by the cases of the mining
industries in Chile and Papua New Guinea. In some situations,the costs of transforming ecosystems are simply deferred tofuture generations. An example reported widely across sub-global

assessments in different parts of the world is tropical deforestation, which caters to current needs but leads to a reduced capacity to supply services in the future.
Declining ecosystem trends have sometimes been mitigatedby innovative local responses. The “threats” observed at an
aggregated, global level may be both overestimated and underestimated from a sub-global perspective (SG.SDM). Assessments at an aggregated level often fail to take into account theadaptive capacity of sub-global actors. Through collaboration insocial networks, actors can develop new institutions and reorganize to mitigate declining conditions. On the other hand, subglobal actors tend to neglect drivers that are beyond their reachof immediate inﬂuence when they craft responses. Hence, it is
crucial for decision-makers to develop institutions at the global,
regional, and national levels that strengthen the adaptive capacity

Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s 85

of actors at the sub-national and local levels to develop contextspeciﬁc responses that do address the full range of relevant drivers. The Biodiversity Management Committees in India are agood example of a national institution that enables local actors to
respond to biodiversity loss. This means neither centralization
nor decentralization but institutions at multiple levels thatenhance the adaptive capacity and effectiveness of sub-national
and local responses.
Multiscale assessments offer insights and results that would
otherwise be missed (SG.SDM). The variability among subglobal assessments in problem deﬁnition, objectives, scale criteria, and systems of explanation increased at ﬁner scales ofassessment (for example, social equity issues became more visible
from coarser to ﬁner scales of assessment). The role of biodiversity as a risk avoidance mechanism for local communities is frequently hidden until local assessments are conducted (as in the
Indian local, Sinai, and Southern African livelihoods studies).
Failure to acknowledge that stakeholders at different scales
perceive different values in various ecosystem services can leadto unworkable and inequitable policies or programs at all scales(SGWG). Ecosystem services that are of considerable importanceat global scales, such as carbon sequestration or waste regulation,

86 Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s

are not necessarily seen to be of value
locally. Similarly, services of local importance, such as the cultural beneﬁts of ecosystems, the availability of manure for fueland fertilizer, or the presence of non-woodforest products, are often not seen as
important globally. Responses designed toachieve goals related to global or regional
concerns are likely to fail unless they take
into account the different values and concerns motivating local communities.
There is evidence that including multiple knowledge systems increases therelevance, credibility, and legitimacy of
the assessment results for some users(SG.SDM). For example, in Bajo Chirripó
in Costa Rica, the involvement of nonscientists added legitimacy and relevance toassessment results for a number of potential users at the local level. In many of the
sub-global assessments, however, local
resource users were one among many groupsof decision-makers, so the question oflegitimacy needs to be taken together withthat of empowerment.
Integrated assessments of ecosystems
and human well-being need to be adapted
to the speciﬁc needs and characteristics ofthe groups undertaking the assessment (SG.SDM, SG11.ES).
Assessments are most useful to decision-makers if they respondto the needs of those individuals. As a result, the MA sub-global
assessments differed signiﬁcantly in the issues they addressed.
At the same time, given the diversity of assessments involved in
the MA, the basic approach had to be adapted by different assessments to ensure its relevance to different user groups. (See Box
6.1.) Several community-based assessments adapted the MA
framework to allow for more dynamic interplays between
variables, to capture ﬁne-grained patterns and processes in complex systems, and to leave room for a more spiritual worldview.
In Peru and Costa Rica, for example, other conceptual frameworks were used that incorporated both the MA principles andlocal cosmologies. In southern Africa, various frameworks wereused in parallel to offset the shortcomings of the MA framework
for community assessments. These modiﬁcations and adaptationsof the framework are an important outcome of the MA.

Box 6.1 Local Adaptations of MA Conceptual Framework (SG.SDM)
that current rates of change may prove chalThe MA framework was applied in a wide
range of assessments at multiple scales. Par- lenging to the adaptive capacities of theticularly for the more local assessments, thecommunities.) The cross shape of the Vilcanota framework diagram represents theframework needed to be adapted to better
reﬂect the needs and concerns of local com“Chakana,” the most recognized and sacredmunities. In the case of an assessment conshape to Quechua people, and orders theducted by and forindigenous communities inthe Vilcanota region ofPeru, the framework had
to be recreated from a
Pachamamabase with the Quechua
Indicators
Ecological
functions
understanding of ecologiof indigenous
cal and social relationDiversity nurturingknowledge
ships. (See Figure.) Within
Spiritual attainment
the Quechua vision of thecosmos, concepts such as
reciprocity (Ayni), theMunay, Yachay,
inseparability of space andLlankaytime, and the cyclical
Adaptation
nature of all processes
Co-evolution
Ayni
Learning systems(Pachakuti) are important
Information andcomponents of the Incaknowledge transmission
systems
deﬁnition of ecosystems.
Love (Munay) and working(Llankay) bring humans toAyllu
a higher state of knowlTraditional institutions
edge (Yachay) about their
Governance systems
surroundings and are
Customary laws
therefore key concepts
Social struggles
linking Quechua communities to the natural world.
Ayllu represents the governing institutions that regSource: Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, Vilcanota Sub-global Assessment
ulate interactions between
all living beings.
The resulting framework has similariworld through deliberative and collective
ties with the MA Conceptual Framework, butdecision-making that emphasizes reciprocity
the divergent features are considered to be(Ayni). Pachamama is similar to a combination of the “ecosystem goods and services”
important to the Quechua people conducting the assessment. The Vilcanota concepand “human well-being” components of thetual framework also includes multiple scales
MA framework. Pachakuti is similar to the MA(Kaypacha, Hananpacha, Ukupacha); how“drivers” (both direct and indirect). Ayllu (andever, these represent both spatial scales andMunay, Yachay, and Llankay) may be seen
the cyclical relationship between the past,
as responses and are more organically integrated into the cyclic process of changepresent, and future. Inherent in this concept
and adaptation.
of space and time is the adaptive capacity ofIn the Vilcanota assessment, the Quechua
the Quechua people, who welcome change
communities directed their work process
and have become resilient to it through an
to assess the conditions and trends of ceradaptive learning process. (It is recognizedtain aspects of the Pachamama (focusing onwater, soil, and agrobiodiversity), how thesegoods and services are changing, the reasons behind the changes, the effects on theother elements of the Pachamama, how thecommunities have adapted and are adapting

KaypachaHananpacha
Ukupacha

Pachakuti
Changes within
thresholds
Complexity of
cause and effectof changes

to the changes, and the state of resilienceof the Quechua principles and institutions for
dealing with these changes in the future.
Developing the local conceptual framework from a base of local concepts and principles, as opposed to simply translating the
MA framework into local terms, has allowed
local communities to take ownership of theirassessment process and given them thepower both to assess the local environmentand human populations using their own knowledge and principles of well-being and to seek
responses to problems within their own cultural and spiritual institutions.

Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s 87

7. What is known about time scales, inertia, and the risk ofnonlinear changes in ecosystems?

T

he time scale of change refers to the time required for theeffects of a perturbation of a process to be expressed. Timescales relevant to ecosystems and their services are shown in Figure 7.1. Inertia refers to the delay or slowness in the response of asystem to factors altering their rate of change, including continuation of change in the system after the cause of that change has
been removed. Resilience refers to the amount of disturbance orstress that a system can absorb and still remain capable of returning to its predisturbance state.

Time Scales and Inertia
Many impacts of humans on ecosystems (both harmful andbeneﬁcial) are slow to become apparent; this can result in thecosts associated with ecosystem changes being deferred tofuture generations. For example, excessive phosphorus is accumulating in many agricultural soils, threatening rivers, lakes,
and coastal oceans with increased eutrophication. Yet it may
take years or decades for the full impact of the phosphorus tobecome apparent through erosion and other processes (S7.3.2).
Similarly, the use of groundwater supplies can exceed therecharge rate for some time before costs of extraction begin togrow signiﬁcantly. In general, people manage ecosystems in amanner that increases short-term beneﬁts; they may not beaware of, or may ignore, costs that are not readily and immediately apparent. This has the inequitable result of increasing
current beneﬁts at costs to future generations.
Different categories of ecosystem services tend to change overdifferent time scales, making it difﬁcult for managers to evaluate trade-offs fully. For example, supporting services such as soil
formation and primary production and regulating services suchas water and disease regulation tend to change over much longer
time scales than provisioning services. As a consequence, impacts
on more slowly changing supporting and regulating services areoften overlooked by managers in pursuit of increased use of provisioning services (S12.ES).
The inertia of various direct and indirect drivers differs considerably, and this strongly inﬂuences the time frame for solving ecosystem-related problems once they are identiﬁed (RWG,
S7). For some drivers, such as the overharvest of particular species, lag times are rather short, and the impact of the driver canbe minimized or halted within short time frames. For others,
such as nutrient loading and, especially, climate change, lag times
are much longer, and the impact of the driver cannot be lessened
for years or decades.

88 Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s

Signiﬁcant inertia exists in the process of species extinctions
that result from habitat loss; even if habitat loss were to end
today, it would take hundreds of years for species numbers toreach a new and lower equilibrium due to the habitat changes
that have taken place in the last centuries (S10). Most species
that will go extinct in the next several centuries will be driven to
extinction as a result of loss or degradation of their habitat (either
through land cover changes or increasingly through climatechanges). Habitat loss can lead to rapid extinction of some species(such as those with extremely limited ranges); but for many species, extinction will only occur after many generations, and longlived species such as some trees could persist for centuries before
ultimately going extinct. This “extinction debt” has important
implications. First, while reductions in the rate of habitat loss willprotect certain species and have signiﬁcant long-term beneﬁts for
species survival in the aggregate, the impact on rates of extinction
over the next 10–50 years is likely to be small (medium certainty).
Second, until a species does go extinct, opportunities exist for it
to be recovered to a viable population size.

Nonlinear Changes in Ecosystems
Nonlinear changes, including accelerating, abrupt, and potentially irreversible changes, have been commonly encountered inecosystems and their services. Most of the time, change in ecosystems and their services is gradual and incremental. Most ofthese gradual changes are detectable and predictable, at least in
principle (high certainty) (S.SDM). However, many examples
exist of nonlinear and sometimes abrupt changes in ecosystems.
In these cases, the ecosystem may change gradually until a particular pressure on it reaches a threshold, at which point changes
occur relatively rapidly as the system shifts to a new state. Someof these nonlinear changes can be very large in magnitude andhave substantial impacts on human well-being. Capabilities forpredicting some nonlinear changes are improving, but for mostecosystems and for most potential nonlinear changes, while science can often warn of increased risks of change, it cannot predict the thresholds where the change will be encountered (C6.2,
S13.4). Numerous examples exist of nonlinear and relatively
abrupt changes in ecosystems:■ Disease emergence (S13.4): Infectious diseases regularly
exhibit nonlinear behavior. If, on average, each infected person
infects at least one other person, then an epidemic spreads, while
if the infection is transferred on average to less than one person
the epidemic dies out. High human population densities in close
contact with animal reservoirs of infectious disease facilitate rapid
exchange of pathogens, and if the threshold rate of infection isachieved—that is, if each infected person on average transmits
the infection to at least one other person—the resulting infectious agents can spread quickly through a worldwide contiguous,
highly mobile, human population with few barriers to transmis-

Figure 7.1. Characteristic Time and Space Scales Related to Ecosystems and Their Services
Note: For comparison, this Figure includes references to time and space scales cited in the Synthesis Report of the IPCC Third
Assessment Report. (IPCC TAR, C4 Fig 4.15, C4.4.2, CF7, S7)
Process:(period in years)
Species numbers to reach a new
equilibrium through extinction after
habitat loss (100 to 1 000)
Secondary succession – reestablishment of original community of species
following disturbance (100 to 1 000)
Species composition in a region to reacha new equilibrium following a lastingchange in climate (10 000 to 1 million)

ECOSYSTEMSTRUCTURE a

Range of lifetimes of species in marine
fossil record (1 to 10 million)
0.1

1

10

100

1 000

10 000100 000

1 000 000ATMOSPHERE

0.1

1

10

100

1 000

10 000100 000

1 000 000

ECOSYSTEMFUNCTIONING
AND SERVICE
CHANGES
0.1

1

10

100

1 000

10 000100 000

1 000 000

Spatial scale:(sq. kilometer)
100 to 10 000
1 to 1010 to 10 000-

10 000 000
Greenhouse gases to mix inglobal atmosphere (2 to 4)

Global

50% of a CO2 pulse
to disappear (50 to 200)

GlobalAir temperature to respondto CO2 rise (up to 120 to150)

GlobalSea level to respond to temperaturechange (up to 10 000)

Global10 000 000
Physiological acclimation of plants toan increase in CO2 (1 to 100)

local

Range of lifetimes oforganisms (up to 1000)

local

Phosphorus concentrations to returnto natural levels after applications
halted (10 to 300)

1 to10

10 000 000

NUMBER OF YEARS IN LOGARITHMIC SCALEa
The ecosystem structure category includes also the “range size of vertabrate species” for which the time scale is not available.
The spatial scale goes from 0.1 to 100 million square kilometers.

Sources: IPCC, Millennium Ecosystem Assessment

sion. The almost instantaneous outbreak of SARS in different
parts of the world is an example of such potential, although rapid
and effective action contained its spread. During the 1997/98 El
Niño, excessive ﬂooding caused cholera epidemics in Djibouti,
Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania, and Mozambique. Warming of theAfrican Great Lakes due to climate change may create conditions
that increase the risk of cholera transmission in surrounding
countries (C14.2.1). An event similar to the 1918 Spanish ﬂu
pandemic, which is thought to have killed 20–40 million people
worldwide, could now result in over 100 million deaths within asingle year. Such a catastrophic event, the possibility of which is
being seriously considered by the epidemiological community,
would probably lead to severe economic disruption and possibly
even rapid collapse in a world economy dependent on fast global
exchange of goods and services.

■ Algal blooms and ﬁsh kills (S13.4): Excessive nutrient loading

fertilizes freshwater and coastal ecosystems. While small increases
in nutrient loading often cause little change in many ecosystems,
once a threshold of nutrient loading is achieved, the changes canbe abrupt and extensive, creating harmful algal blooms (including blooms of toxic species) and often leading to the dominationof the ecosystem by one or a few species. Severe nutrient overloading can lead to the formation of oxygen-depleted zones, killing all animal life.

Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s 89

RANDY WESTBROOKS, U.S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY/INVASIVES.ORG■ Fisheries collapses (C18): Fish population collapses have beencommonly encountered in both freshwater and marine ﬁsheries.
Fish populations are generally able to withstand some level ofcatch with a relatively small impact on their overall population
size. As the catch increases, however, a threshold is reached after
which too few adults remain to produce enough offspring to support that level of harvest, and the population may drop abruptly
to a much smaller size. For example, the Atlantic cod stocks ofthe east coast of Newfoundland collapsed in 1992, forcing theclosure of the ﬁshery after hundreds of years of exploitation, as
shown in Figure 3.4 (CF2 Box 2.4). Most important, the stocks
may take years to recover or not recover at all, even if harvestingis signiﬁcantly reduced or eliminated entirely.
■ Species introductions and losses: Introductions (or removal)of species can cause nonlinear changes in ecosystems and theirservices. For example, the introduction of the zebra mussel (seephoto above) into U.S. aquatic systems resulted in the extirpation of native clams in Lake St. Clair, large changes in energy
ﬂow and ecosystem function, and annual costs of $100 million
to the power industry and other users (S12.4.8). The introduction of the comb jelly ﬁsh (Mnemiopsis leidyi) in the Black Sea
caused the loss of 26 major ﬁsheries species and has been implicated (along with other factors) in subsequent growth of the

90 Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i sanoxic “dead zone” (C28.5). The loss of the sea otters from many
coastal ecosystems on the Paciﬁc Coast of North America due tohunting led to the booming populations of sea urchins (a preyspecies for otters) which in turn led to the loss of kelp forests(which are eaten by urchins).
■ Changes in dominant species in coral ecosystems: Some coral
reef ecosystems have undergone sudden shifts from coral-dominated to algae-dominated reefs. The trigger for such phase shifts,
which are essentially irreversible, is usually multifaceted andincludes increased nutrient input leading to eutrophic conditions, and removal of herbivorous ﬁshes that maintain the balance between corals and algae. Once a threshold is reached, thechange in the ecosystem takes place within months and theresulting ecosystem, although stable, is less productive and lessdiverse. One well-studied example is the sudden switch in 1983
from coral to algal domination of Jamaican reef systems. This
followed several centuries of overﬁshing of herbivores, which left
the control of algal cover almost entirely dependent on a single
species of sea urchin, whose populations collapsed when exposed
to a species-speciﬁc pathogen. As a result, Jamaica’s reefs shifted(apparently irreversibly) to a new low-diversity, algae-dominatedstate with very limited capacity to support ﬁsheries (C4.6).
■ Regional climate change (C13.3): The vegetation in a region
inﬂuences climate through albedo (reﬂectance of radiation fromthe surface), transpiration (ﬂux of water from the ground to theatmosphere through plants), and the aerodynamic properties ofthe surface. In the Sahel region of North Africa, vegetation coveris almost completely controlled by rainfall. When vegetation ispresent, rainfall is quickly recycled, generally increasing precipitation and, in turn, leading to a denser vegetation canopy.
Model results suggest that land degradation leads to a substantial reduction in water recycling and may have contributed tothe observed trend in rainfall reduction in the region over thelast 30 years. In tropical regions, deforestation generally leads
to decreased rainfall. Since forest existence crucially depends on
rainfall, the relationship between tropical forests and precipitation forms a positive feedback that, under certain conditions,
theoretically leads to the existence of two steady states: rainforest and savanna (although some models suggest only one stableclimate-vegetation state in the Amazon).
There is established but incomplete evidence that changes
being made in ecosystems are increasing the likelihood of nonlinear and potentially high-impact, abrupt changes in physicaland biological systems that have important consequences forhuman well-being (C6, S3, S13.4, S.SDM). The increased
likelihood of these events stems from the following factors:■ On balance, changes humans are making to ecosystems are
reducing the resilience of the ecological components of the systems(established but incomplete) (C6, S3, S12). Genetic and species
diversity, as well as spatial patterns of landscapes, environmental
ﬂuctuations, and temporal cycles with which species evolved,
generate the resilience of ecosystems. Functional groups ofspecies contribute to ecosystem processes and services in similar
ways. Diversity among functional groups increases the ﬂux ofecosystem processes and services (established but incomplete).
Within functional groups, species respond differently toenvironmental ﬂuctuations. This response diversity derives fromvariation in the response of species to environmental drivers,
heterogeneity in species distributions, differences in ways thatspecies use seasonal cycles or disturbance patterns, or othermechanisms. Response diversity enables ecosystems to adjust inchanging environments, altering biotic structure in ways thatmaintain processes and services (high certainty) (S.SDM). The
loss of biodiversity that is now taking place thus tends to reduce
the resilience of ecosystems.
■ There are growing pressures from various drivers (S7, SG7.5).
Threshold changes in ecosystems are not uncommon, but they
are infrequently encountered in the absence of human-causedpressures on ecosystems. Many of these pressures are now
growing. Increased ﬁsh harvests raise the likelihood of ﬁsheriescollapses; higher rates of climate change boost the potential for
species extinctions; increased introductions of nitrogen andphosphorus into the environment make the eutrophication of

aquatic ecosystems more likely; as human populations become
more mobile, more and more species are being introduced into
new habitats, and this increases the chance of harmful pests
emerging in those regions.
The growing bushmeat trade poses particularly signiﬁcantthreats associated with nonlinear changes, in this case accelerating rates of change (C8.3, S.SDM, C14). Growth in the use andtrade of bushmeat is placing increasing pressure on many species,
particularly in Africa and Asia. While population size of harvested species may decline gradually with increasing harvest forsome time, once the harvest exceeds sustainable levels, the rate of
decline of populations of the harvested species will tend to accelerate. This could place them at risk of extinction and also reduce
the food supply of the people dependent on these resources.
Finally, the bushmeat trade involves relatively high levels ofinteraction between humans and some relatively closely related
wild animals that are eaten. Again, this increases the risk of anonlinear change, in this case the emergence of new and serious
pathogens. Given the speed and magnitude of international travel
today, new pathogens could spread rapidly around the world.
A potential nonlinear response, currently the subject ofintensive scientiﬁc research, is the atmospheric capacity tocleanse itself of air pollution (in particular, hydrocarbons andreactive nitrogen compounds) (C.SDM). This capacity depends
on chemical reactions involving the hydroxyl radical, the atmospheric concentration of which has declined by about 10%(medium certainty) since preindustrial times.
Once an ecosystem has undergone a nonlinear change,
recovery to the original state may take decades or centuries andmay sometimes be impossible. For example, the recovery ofoverexploited ﬁsheries that have been closed to ﬁshing is quite
variable. Although the cod ﬁshery in Newfoundland has beenclosed for 13 years (except for a small inshore ﬁshery between
1998 and 2003), there have been few signs of a recovery,
and many scientists are not optimistic about its return in theforeseeable future (C18.2.6). On the other hand, the North
Sea Herring ﬁshery collapsed due to overharvesting in the late1970s, but it recovered after being closed for four years (C18).

Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s 91

8. What options exist to manage ecosystems sustainably?

It is a major challenge to reverse the degradation of ecosystems while meeting increasing demands for their services.
But this challenge can be met. Three of the four MA scenarios
show that changes in policies, institutions, and practices canmitigate some of the negative consequences of growing pressures on ecosystems, although the changes required are large
and not currently under way (S.SDM). As noted in Key Question 5, in three of the four MA scenarios at least one of the three
categories of provisioning, regulating, and cultural services is inbetter condition in 2050 than in 2000, although biodiversity loss
continues at high rates in all scenarios. The scale of interventions
that results in these positive outcomes, however, is very signiﬁcant. The interventions include major investments in environmentally sound technology, active adaptive management,
proactive actions to address environmental problems before theirfull consequences are experienced, major investments in public
goods (such as education and health), strong action to reduce
socioeconomic disparities and eliminate poverty, and expanded
capacity of people to manage ecosystems adaptively.
More speciﬁcally, in Global Orchestration trade barriers are
eliminated, distorting subsidies are removed, and a major emphasis is placed on eliminating poverty and hunger. In Adapting
Mosaic, by 2010 most countries are spending close to 13% of
their GDP on education (compared with an average of 3.5% in2000), and institutional arrangements to promote transfer ofskills and knowledge among regional groups proliferate. In
TechnoGarden, policies are put in place to provide payment to
individuals and companies that provide or maintain the provision of ecosystem services. For example, in this scenario, by2015 roughly 50% of European agriculture and 10% of North
American agriculture is aimed at balancing the production offood with the production of other ecosystem services. Under this
scenario, signiﬁcant advances occur in the development of environmental technologies to increase production of services, create
substitutes, and reduce harmful trade-offs.
Past actions to slow or reverse the degradation of ecosystems
have yielded signiﬁcant beneﬁts, but these improvements havegenerally not kept pace with growing pressures and demands.
Although most ecosystem services assessed in the MA are being
degraded, the extent of that degradation would have been muchgreater without responses implemented in past decades. For
example, more than 100,000 protected areas (including strictly
protected areas such as national parks as well as areas managed
for the sustainable use of natural ecosystems, including timber
harvest or wildlife harvest) covering about 11.7% of the terrestrial surface have now been established (R5.2.1). These play animportant role in the conservation of biodiversity and ecosystem

92 Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i sservices, although important gaps in the distribution of protectedareas remain, particularly in marine and freshwater systems.
Technological advances have also helped to lessen the rate of
growth in pressure on ecosystems caused per unit increase indemand for ecosystem services. For all developing countries, forinstance, yields of wheat, rice, and maize rose between 109% and208% in the past 40 years. Without this increase, far more habitat would have been converted to agriculture during this time.
An effective set of responses to ensure the sustainable management of ecosystems must address the drivers presented in
Key Question 4 and overcome barriers related to (RWG):■ inappropriate institutional and governance arrangements,
including the presence of corruption and weak systems ofregulation and accountability;■ market failures and the misalignment of economic incentives;■ social and behavioral factors, including the lack of politicaland economic power of some groups (such as poor people,
women, and indigenous groups) who are particularly
dependent on ecosystem services or harmed by theirdegradation;■ underinvestment in the development and diffusion oftechnologies that could increase the efﬁciency of use of
ecosystem services and reduce the harmful impacts ofvarious drivers of ecosystem change; and■ insufﬁcient knowledge (as well as the poor use of existingknowledge) concerning ecosystem services and management, policy, technological, behavioral and institutional
responses that could enhance beneﬁts from these services
while conserving resources.
All these barriers are compounded by weak human and institutional capacity related to the assessment and management of ecosystem services, underinvestment in the regulation andmanagement of their use, lack of public awareness, and lack ofawareness among decision-makers of the threats posed by thedegradation of ecosystem services and the opportunities that
more sustainable management of ecosystems could provide.
The MA assessed 74 response options for ecosystem services,integrated ecosystem management, conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity, and climate change. (See Appendix B.)
Many of these options hold signiﬁcant promise for conserving or
sustainably enhancing the supply of ecosystem services. Examples
of promising responses that address the barriers just described
are presented in the remainder of this section (RWG, R2). The
stakeholder groups that would need to take decisions to implement each response are indicated as follows: G for government,
B for business and industry, and N for nongovernmental organizations and other civil society organizations such as communitybased and indigenous peoples organizations.

Institutions and Governance
Changes in institutional and environmental governance frameworks are sometimes required in order to create the enabling
conditions for effective management of ecosystems, while inother cases existing institutions could meet these needs but facesigniﬁcant barriers. Many existing institutions at both the global
and the national level have the mandate to address the degradation of ecosystem services but face a variety of challenges indoing so related to the need for greater cooperation across sectors
and the need for coordinated responses at multiple scales. However, since a number of the issues identiﬁed in this assessment arerecent concerns and were not speciﬁcally taken into account in
the design of today’s institutions, changes in existing institutions
and the development of new ones may sometimes be needed,
particularly at the national scale.
In particular, existing national and global institutions are
not well designed to deal with the management of open accessresources, a characteristic of many ecosystem services. Issues ofownership and access to resources, rights to participation indecision-making, and regulation of particular types of resource
use or discharge of wastes can strongly inﬂuence the sustainability of ecosystem management and are fundamental determinantsof who wins and who loses from changes in ecosystems. Corruption—a major obstacle to effective management of ecosystems—
also stems from weak systems of regulation and accountability.
Promising interventions include:■ Integration of ecosystem management goals within other sectors
and within broader development planning frameworks (G). The mostimportant public policy decisions affecting ecosystems are often
made by agencies and in policy arenas other than those charged
with protecting ecosystems. Ecosystem management goals are

more likely to be achieved if they are reﬂected in decisions in othersectors and in national development strategies. For example, thePoverty Reduction Strategies prepared by developing-country governments for the World Bank and other institutions strongly shapenational development priorities, but in general these have nottaken into account the importance of ecosystems to improving thebasic human capabilities of the poorest (R17.ES).
■ Increased coordination among multilateral environmental
agreements and between environmental agreements and otherinternational economic and social institutions (G). International
agreements are indispensable for addressing ecosystem-related
concerns that span national boundaries, but numerous obstacles
weaken their current effectiveness (R17.2). The limited, focusednature of the goals and mechanisms included in most bilateral and multilateral environmental treaties does not address
the broader issue of ecosystem services and human well-being.
Steps are now being taken to increase coordination among thesetreaties, and this could help broaden the focus of the array of
instruments. However, coordination is also needed between themultilateral environmental agreements and the more politicallypowerful international legal institutions, such as economic andtrade agreements, to ensure that they are not acting at cross-purposes (R.SDM). And implementation of these agreements also
needs to be coordinated among relevant institutions and sectors
at the national level.
■ Increased transparency and accountability of government andprivate-sector performance in decisions that affect ecosystems, including
through greater involvement of concerned stakeholders in decisionmaking (G, B, N) (RWG, SG9). Laws, policies, institutions, andEcosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s 93

markets that have been shaped
through public participation indecision-making are more likely
to be effective and perceived asjust. For example, degradationof freshwater and other ecosystem services generally havea disproportionate impact on
those who are, in various ways,
excluded from participation in
the decision-making process(R7.2.3). Stakeholder participation also contributes to thedecision-making process because
it allows a better understandingof impacts and vulnerability, thedistribution of costs and beneﬁts
associated with trade-offs, andthe identiﬁcation of a broader
range of response options thatare available in a speciﬁc context.
And stakeholder involvement
and transparency of decisionmaking can increase accountability and reduce corruption.
■ Development of institutions
that devolve (or centralize) decision-making to meet management
needs while ensuring effective coordination across scales (G, B, N)(RWG). Problems of ecosystem management have been exacerbated by both overly centralized and overly decentralized decision-making. For example, highly centralized forest management
has proved ineffective in many countries, and efforts are now
being made to move responsibility to lower levels of decisionmaking either within the natural resources sector or as part ofbroader decentralization of governmental responsibilities. At thesame time, one of the most intractable problems of ecosystemmanagement has been the lack of alignment between politicalboundaries and units appropriate for the management of ecosystem goods and services. Downstream communities may not haveaccess to the institutions through which upstream actions canbe inﬂuenced; alternatively, downstream communities or countries may be stronger politically than upstream regions and may
dominate control of upstream areas without addressing upstream
needs. A number of countries, however, are now strengthening
regional institutions for the management of transboundary ecosystems (such as the Danube River, the Mekong River Commission, East African cooperation on Lake Victoria, and the Amazon
Cooperation Treaty Organization).
■ Development of institutions to regulate interactions between
markets and ecosystems (G) (RWG). The potential of policy andmarket reforms to improve ecosystem management are often
constrained by weak or absent institutions. For example, thepotential of the Clean Development Mechanism established

94 Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i sunder the Framework Convention on Climate Change to provide ﬁnancial support to developing countries in return forgreenhouse gas reductions, which would realize climate and biodiversity beneﬁts through payments for carbon sequestration inforests, is constrained by unclear property rights, concerns overthe permanence of reductions, and lack of mechanisms forresolving conﬂicts. Moreover, existing regulatory institutions
often do not have ecosystem protection as a clear mandate. For
example, independent regulators of privatized water systems andpower systems do not necessarily promote resource use efﬁciency
and renewable supply. There is a continuing importance of therole of the state to set and enforce rules even in the context ofprivatization and market-led growth.
■ Development of institutional frameworks that promote a shift
from highly sectoral resource management approaches to more integrated approaches (G, B) (R15.ES, R12.ES, R11.ES). In mostcountries, separate ministries are in charge of different aspects ofecosystems (such as ministries of environment, agriculture, water,
and forests) and different drivers of change (such as ministries ofenergy, transportation, development, and trade). Each of theseministries has control over different aspects of ecosystem management. As a result, there is seldom the political will to develop
effective ecosystem management strategies, and competition
among the ministries can often result in policy choices that are
detrimental to ecosystems. Integrated responses intentionally andactively address ecosystem services and human well-being simultaneously, such as integrated coastal zone management, integrated river basin management, and national sustainable
development strategies. Although the potential for integrated

RON GILING/PETER ARNOLD, INC

responses is high, numerous barriers have limited their effectiveness: they are resource-intensive, but the potential beneﬁts canexceed the costs; they require multiple instruments for theirimplementation; and they require new institutional and governance structures, skills, knowledge, and capacity. Thus far, theresults of implementation of integrated responses have been
mixed in terms of ecological, social, and economic impacts.

Economics and Incentives
Economic and ﬁnancial interventions provide powerful instruments to regulate the use of ecosystem goods and services (C5Box 5.2). Because many ecosystem services are not traded inmarkets, markets fail to provide appropriate signals that mightotherwise contribute to the efﬁcient allocation and sustainable
use of the services. Even if people are aware of the services provided by an ecosystem, they are neither compensated for providing these services nor penalized for reducing them. In addition,
the people harmed by the degradation of ecosystem services areoften not the ones who beneﬁt from the actions leading to theirdegradation, and so those costs are not factored into management decisions. A wide range of opportunities exists to inﬂuence
human behavior to address this challenge in the form of economic and ﬁnancial instruments. Some of them establish markets; others work through the monetary and ﬁnancial interests ofthe targeted social actors; still others affect relative prices.
Market mechanisms can only work if supporting institutions
are in place, and thus there is a need to build institutional
capacity to enable more widespread use of these mechanisms(R17). The adoption of economic instruments usually requires alegal framework, and in many cases the choice of a viable andeffective economic intervention mechanism is determined by thesocioeconomic context. For example, resource taxes can be a
powerful instrument to guard against the overexploitation of an
ecosystem service, but an effective tax scheme requires well-established and reliable monitoring and tax collection systems. Similarly, subsidies can be effective to introduce and implementcertain technologies or management procedures, but they areinappropriate in settings that lack the transparency and accountability needed to prevent corruption. The establishment of market mechanisms also often involves explicit decisions about
wealth distribution and resource allocation, when, for example,
decisions are made to establish private property rights forresources that were formerly considered common pool resources.
For that reason, the inappropriate use of market mechanisms canfurther exacerbate problems of poverty.
Promising interventions include:■ Elimination of subsidies that promote excessive use of ecosystemservices (and, where possible, transfer of these subsidies to payments
for nonmarketed ecosystem services) (G) (S7.ES). Subsidies paid tothe agricultural sectors of OECD countries between 2001 and2003 averaged over $324 billion annually, or one third the global
value of agricultural products in 2000. Many countries outside
the OECD also have inappropriate subsidies. A signiﬁcant proportion of this total involves production subsidies that lead togreater food production in countries with subsidies than the
global market conditions warrant, that promote the overuse ofwater, fertilizers, and pesticides, and that reduce the proﬁtabilityof agriculture in developing countries. They also increase land
values, adding to landowners’ resistance to subsidy reductions.
On the social side, agricultural subsidies make farmers overly
dependent on taxpayers for their livelihood, change wealth distribution and social composition by beneﬁting large corporate
farms to the detriment of smaller family farms, and contribute to
the dependence of large segments of the developing world onaid. Finally, it is not clear that these policies achieve one of theirprimary targets—supporting farmers’ income. Only about aquarter of the total expenses in price supports translate into additional income for farm households.
Similar problems are created by ﬁshery subsidies, which for theOECD countries were estimated at $6.2 billion in 2002, orabout 20% of the gross value of production that year (C8.4.1).
Subsidies on ﬁsheries, apart from their distributional impacts,
affect the management of resources and their sustainable use byencouraging overexploitation of the resource, thereby worsening
the common property problem present in ﬁsheries. Althoughsome indirect subsidies, such as payments for the withdrawal ofindividual transferable harvest quotas, could have a positive
impact on ﬁsheries management, the majority of subsidies have anegative effect. Inappropriate subsidies are also common in sectors such as water and forestry.

Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s 95

Although removal of production subsidies would produce net
beneﬁts, it would not occur without costs. The farmers and ﬁshers beneﬁting directly from the subsidies would suffer the mostimmediate losses, but there would also be indirect effects on ecosystems both locally and globally. In some cases it may be possible to transfer production subsides to other activities that
promote ecosystem stewardship, such as payment for the provision or enhancement of regulatory or supporting services. Compensatory mechanisms may be needed for the poor who areadversely affected by the immediate removal of subsidies (R17.5).
Reduced subsidies within the OECD may lessen pressures onsome ecosystems in those countries, but they could lead to more
rapid conversion and intensiﬁcation of land for agriculture indeveloping countries and would thus need to be accompanied bypolicies to minimize the adverse impacts on ecosystems there.
■ Greater use of economic instruments and market-based approaches
in the management of ecosystem services (G, B, N) (RWG). Economic
instruments and market mechanisms with the potential to enhance
the management of ecosystem services include:■ Taxes or user fees for activities with “external” costs (trade-offs
not accounted for in the market). These instruments create
an incentive that lessens the external costs and provides revenues that can help protect the damaged ecosystem services.
Examples include taxes on excessive application of nutrientsor ecotourism user fees.
■ Creation of markets, including through cap-and-trade systems.
Ecosystem services that have been treated as “free”
resources, as is often the case for water, tend to be used
wastefully. The establishment of markets for the services
can both increase the incentives for their conservation andincrease the economic efﬁciency of their allocation if supporting legal and economic institutions are in place. However, as noted earlier, while markets will increase the
efﬁciency of the use of the resource, they can have harmful
effects on particular groups of users who may inequitably
affected by the change (R17). The combination of regulated emission caps, coupled with market mechanisms for
trading pollution rights, often provides an efﬁcient meansof reducing emissions harmful to ecosystems. For example,
nutrient trading systems may be a low-cost way to reducewater pollution in the United States (R7 Box 7.3).
One of the most rapidly growing markets related to ecosystem services is the carbon market. (See Figure 8.1.)
Approximately 64 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent
were exchanged through projects from January to May
2004, nearly as much as during all of 2003 (78 million tons)(C5 Box 5.2). The value of carbon dioxide trades in 2003
was approximately $300 million. About one quarter of the
trades (by volume of CO2 equivalents) involve investment inecosystem services (hydropower or biomass). The WorldBank has established a fund with a capital of $33.3 million(as of January 2005) to invest in afforestation and reforestation projects that sequester or conserve carbon in forest and

96 Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i sFigure 8.1. Total Carbon Market Value per Year(in million dollars nominal) (C5 Box 5.1)

Million dollars
3502004 figures
are for the
first fivemonths only

Known

300

Estimated

250

200

150

100

50

0

1998

1999

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

Sources: World Bank, Millennium Ecosystem Assessment

agroecosystems while promoting biodiversity conservationand poverty alleviation. It is speculated that the value of the
global carbon emissions trading markets may reach $10 billion to $44 billion in 2010 (and involve trades totaling 4.5
billion tons of carbon dioxide or equivalent).
■ Payment for ecosystem services. Mechanisms can be establishedto enable individuals, ﬁrms, or the public sector to pay
resource owners to provide particular services. For example,
in New South Wales, Australia, associations of farmers purchase salinity credits from the State Forests Agency, which inturn contracts with upstream landholders to plant trees,
which reduce water tables and store carbon. Similarly, in
1996 Costa Rica established a nationwide system of conservation payments to induce landowners to provide ecosystemservices. Under this program, the government brokers contracts between international and domestic “buyers” and local“sellers” of sequestered carbon, biodiversity, watershed services, and scenic beauty. By 2001, more than 280,000 hectares of forests had been incorporated into the program at a
cost of about $30 million, with pending applications covering an additional 800,000 hectares (C5 Box 5.2).
Other innovative conservation ﬁnancing mechanisms
include “biodiversity offsets” (whereby developers pay forconservation activities as compensation for unavoidable
harm that a project causes to biodiversity). An online news
site, the Ecosystem Marketplace, has now been establishedby a consortium of institutions to provide information on
the development of markets for ecosystem services and thepayments for them.
■ Mechanisms to enable consumer preferences to be expressed
through markets. Consumer pressure may provide an alternative way to inﬂuence producers to adopt more sustainable production practices in the absence of effective
government regulation. For example, certiﬁcation schemesthat exist for sustainable ﬁsheries and forest practices provide people with the opportunity to promote sustainability
through their consumer choices. Within the forest sector,
forest certiﬁcation has become widespread in many countries and forest conditions; thus far, however, most certiﬁed
forests are in temperate regions, managed by large companies that export to northern retailers (R8).

Social and Behavioral Responses
Social and behavioral responses—including population policy;
public education; empowerment of communities, women,
and youth; and civil society actions—can be instrumental in
responding to ecosystem degradation. These are generally interventions that stakeholders initiate and execute through exercising
their procedural or democratic rights in efforts to improve ecosystems and human well-being.
Promising interventions include:■ Measures to reduce aggregate consumption of unsustainably managed ecosystem services (G, B, N) (RWG). The choices about what
individuals consume and how much they consume are inﬂuenced
not just by considerations of price but also by behavioral factors
related to culture, ethics, and values. Behavioral changes that could
reduce demand for degraded ecosystem services can be encouraged
through actions by governments (such as education and publicawareness programs or the promotion of demand-side management), industry (such as improved product labeling or commitments to use raw materials from sources certiﬁed as sustainable),and civil society (such as public awareness campaigns). Efforts to
reduce aggregate consumption, however, must sometimes incorporate measures to increase the access to and consumption of thosesame ecosystem services by speciﬁc groups such as poor people.
■ Communication and education (G, B, N) (RWG, R5).
Improved communication and education are essential to achieve
the objectives of the environmental conventions, the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation, and the sustainable managementof natural resources more generally. Both the public and decision-makers can beneﬁt from education concerning ecosystems
and human well-being, but education more generally provides
tremendous social beneﬁts that can help address many drivers of
ecosystem degradation. Barriers to the effective use of communication and education include a failure to use research and apply
modern theories of learning and change. While the importanceof communication and education is well recognized, providing
the human and ﬁnancial resources to undertake effective work is
a continuing barrier.

■ Empowerment of groups particularly dependent on ecosystemservices or affected by their degradation, including women, indigenous people, and young people (G, B, N) (RWG). Despite women’s
knowledge about the environment and the potential they possess,their participation in decision-making has often been restrictedby social and cultural structures. Young people are key stakeholders in that they will experience the longer-term consequences ofdecisions made today concerning ecosystem services. Indigenous
control of traditional homelands can sometimes have environmental beneﬁts, although the primary justiﬁcation continues tobe based on human and cultural rights.

Technological Responses
Given the growing demands for ecosystem services and otherincreased pressures on ecosystems, the development and diffusion of technologies designed to increase the efﬁciency of
resource use or reduce the impacts of drivers such as climatechange and nutrient loading are essential. Technological change
has been essential for meeting growing demands for some ecosystem services, and technology holds considerable promise tohelp meet future growth in demand. Technologies already exist
for reducing nutrient pollution at reasonable costs—including
technologies to reduce point source emissions, changes in crop
management practices, and precision farming techniques to help
control the application of fertilizers to a ﬁeld, for example—but
new policies are needed for these tools to be applied on a sufﬁcient scale to slow and ultimately reverse the increase in nutrient loading (recognizing that this global goal must be achieved
even while increasing nutrient applications in some regions suchas sub-Saharan Africa). Many negative impacts on ecosystems
and human well-being have resulted from these technologicalchanges, however (R17.ES). The cost of “retroﬁtting” technologies once their negative consequences become apparent can be
extremely high, so careful assessment is needed prior to the introduction of new technologies.
Promising interventions include:■ Promotion of technologies that increase crop yields without any
harmful impacts related to water, nutrient, and pesticide use (G, B,
N) (R6). Agricultural expansion will continue to be one of the
major drivers of biodiversity loss well into the twenty-ﬁrst century. Development, assessment, and diffusion of technologies that
could increase the production of food per unit area sustainably
without harmful trade-offs related to excessive use of water, nutrients, or pesticides would signiﬁcantly lessen pressure on otherecosystem services. Without the intensiﬁcation that has takenplace since 1950, a further 20 million square kilometers of land
would have had to be brought into production to achieve today’s
crop production (C.SDM). The challenge for the future is to similarly reduce the pressure for expansion of agriculture without
simultaneously increasing pressures on ecosystem services due towater use, excessive nutrient loading, and pesticide use.

Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s 97

■ Restoration of ecosystem services (G, B, N) (RWG, R7.4). Eco-system restoration activities are now common in many countries
and include actions to restore almost all types of ecosystems,
including wetlands, forests, grasslands, estuaries, coral reefs, andmangroves. Ecosystems with some features of the ones that were
present before conversion can often be established and can provide some of the original ecosystem services (such as pollution
ﬁltration in wetlands or timber production from forests). The
restored systems seldom fully replace the original systems, butthey still help meet needs for particular services. Yet the cost ofrestoration is generally extremely high in relation to the cost of
preventing the degradation of the ecosystem. Not all services canbe restored, and those that are heavily degraded may require considerable time for restoration.
■ Promotion of technologies to increase energy efﬁciency andreduce greenhouse gas emissions (G, B) (R13). Signiﬁcant reductions in net greenhouse gas emissions are technically feasible due
to an extensive array of technologies in the energy supply, energy
demand, and waste management sectors. Reducing projected
emissions will require a portfolio of energy production technologies ranging from fuel switching (coal/oil to gas) and increased
power plant efﬁciency to increased use of renewable energy technologies, complemented by more efﬁcient use of energy in thetransportation, buildings, and industry sectors. It will also
involve the development and implementation of supporting
institutions and policies to overcome barriers to the diffusion ofthese technologies into the marketplace, increased public andprivate-sector funding for research and development, and effective technology transfer.

Knowledge and Cognitive Responses
Effective management of ecosystems is constrained both by alack of knowledge and information concerning different aspectsof ecosystems and by the failure to use adequately the information that does exist in support of management decisions.
Although sufﬁcient information exists to take many actions that
could help conserve ecosystems and enhance human well-being,major information gaps exist. In most regions, for example, relatively little is known about the status and economic value ofmost ecosystem services, and their depletion is rarely tracked innational economic accounts. Limited information exists about
the likelihood of nonlinear changes in ecosystems or the locationof thresholds where such changes may be encountered. Basic
global data on the extent and trend in different types of ecosystems and land use are surprisingly scarce. Models used to project
future environmental and economic conditions have limited
capability of incorporating ecological “feedbacks” including nonlinear changes in ecosystems.
At the same time, decision-makers do not use all of the relevant information that is available. This is due in part to institutional failures that prevent existing policy-relevant scientiﬁc

98 Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i sinformation from being made available to decision-makers. But
it is also due to the failure to incorporate other forms of knowledge and information, such as traditional knowledge and practitioners’ knowledge, that are often of considerable value forecosystem management.
Promising interventions include:■ Incorporate both the market and nonmarket values of ecosystems
in resource management and investment decisions (G, B) (RWG).
Most resource management and investment decisions arestrongly inﬂuenced by considerations of the monetary costs andbeneﬁts of alternative policy choices. In the case of ecosystemmanagement, however, this often leads to outcomes that are notin the interest of society, since the nonmarketed values of ecosystems may exceed the marketed values. As a result, many existing
resource management policies favor sectors such as agriculture,
forestry, and ﬁsheries at the expense of the use of these same ecosystems for water supply, recreation, and cultural services that
may be of greater economic value. Decisions can be improved ifthey include the total economic value of alternative management
options and involve deliberative mechanisms that bring to bearnoneconomic considerations as well.
■ Use of all relevant forms of knowledge and information in assessments and decision-making, including traditional and practitioners’
knowledge (G, B, N) (RWG, C17.ES). Effective management of
ecosystems typically requires “place-based” knowledge—information about the speciﬁc characteristics and history of an ecosystem.
Formal scientiﬁc information is often one source of such information, but traditional knowledge or practitioners’ knowledge heldby local resource managers can be of equal or greater value. Whilethat knowledge is used in the decisions taken by those who have it,
it is too rarely incorporated into other decision-making processes
and is often inappropriately dismissed.
■ Enhance and sustain human and institutional capacity forassessing the consequences of ecosystem change for human well-being
and acting on such assessments (G, B, N) (RWG). Greater technical capacity is needed for agriculture, forest, and ﬁsheries management. But the capacity that exists for these sectors, as limited
as it is in many countries, is still vastly greater than the capacity
for effective management of other ecosystem services. Because
awareness of the importance of these other services has only
recently grown, there is limited experience with assessing ecosystem services fully. Serious limits exist in all countries, but especially in developing countries, in terms of the expertise needed insuch areas as monitoring changes in ecosystem services, economic valuation or health assessment of ecosystem changes, andpolicy analysis related to ecosystem services. Even when suchassessment information is available, however, the traditional
highly sectoral nature of decision-making and resource management makes the implementation of recommendations difﬁcult.
This constraint can also be overcome through increased trainingof individuals in existing institutions and through institutional
reforms to build capacity for more integrated responses.

Design of Effective Decision-making Processes

typically used to evaluate potential policy options) can assist
decision-making concerning ecosystems and their services (R3Tables 3.6 to 3.8). Deliberative tools include neighborhood
forums, citizens’ juries, community issues groups, consensus conferences, electronic democracy, focus groups, issue forums, andecosystem service user forums. Examples of information-gathering tools include citizens’ research panels, deliberative opinion
polls, environmental impact assessments, participatory rural
appraisal, and rapid rural appraisal. Some common planning
tools are consensus participation, cost-beneﬁt analysis, multicriteria analysis, participatory learning and action, stakeholder decision analysis, trade-off analysis, and visioning exercises. The useof decision-making methods that adopt a pluralistic perspective
is particularly pertinent, since these techniques do not give
undue weight to any particular viewpoint. These tools can beused at a variety of scales, including global, sub-global, and local.
A variety of frameworks and methods can be used to makebetter decisions in the face of uncertainties in data, prediction,
context, and scale (R4.5). Commonly used methods include
cost-beneﬁt or multicriteria analyses, risk assessment, the precautionary principle, and vulnerability analysis. (See Table 8.1.) All
these methods have been able to support optimization exercises,

Regional
and Global

National

Micro

Decisions affecting ecosystems and their services can be
improved by changing the processes used to reach those decisions. The context of decision-making about ecosystems ischanging rapidly. The new challenge to decision-making is tomake effective use of information and tools in this changing context in order to improve the decisions. At the same time, someold challenges must still be addressed. The decision-making process and the actors involved inﬂuence the intervention chosen.
Decision-making processes vary across jurisdictions, institutions,and cultures. Yet the MA has identiﬁed the following elements ofdecision-making processes related to ecosystems and their services that tend to improve the decisions reached and their outcomes for ecosystems and human well-being (R18.ES):■ Use the best available information, including considerationsof the value of both marketed and nonmarketed ecosystemservices.
■ Ensure transparency and the effective and informed participation of important stakeholders.
■ Recognize that not all values at stake can be quantiﬁed, andthus quantiﬁcation can provide a false objectivity in decision processes that have signiﬁcant subjective elements.
■ Strive for efﬁciency,
but not at theTable 8.1. Applicability of Decision Support Methods and Frameworks
expense of(R4 Table 4.1)
effectiveness.
Scale of■ Consider equity andApplication
vulnerability in termsof the distribution of
costs and beneﬁts.
■ Ensure accountabilMethod
Optimization
EquityThresholds
Uncertainty
ity and provide forregular monitoring
Cost-beneﬁt
+
+
–
+



analysisand evaluation.
■ Consider cumulative
Risk
+
+
++
++



and cross-scale effects
assessment
and, in particular,
Multi-criteria
++
+
+
+


assess trade-offs
analysisacross different ecoPrecautionary
+
+
++
++



system services.
principlea
A wide range of deliberVulnerability
+
+
++
+


ative tools (which facilianalysis
tate transparency andastakeholder participation),
The precautionary principle is not strictly analogous to the other analytical and assessment methods but still can beconsidered a method for decision support. The precautionary principle prescribes how to bring scientiﬁc uncertainty into theinformation-gathering
decision-making process by explicitly formalizing precaution and bringing it to the forefront of the deliberations. It posits thattools (which are primarily
signiﬁcant actions (ranging from doing nothing to banning a potentially harmful substance or activity, for instance) may bejustiﬁed when the degree of possible harm is large and irreversible.
focused on collecting
data and opinions), andLegend:planning tools (which are++ = direct application of the method by design+ = possible application with modiﬁcation or (in the case of uncertainty) the method has alreadybeen modiﬁed to handle uncertainty– = weak but not impossible applicability with signiﬁcant effort

Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s 99

but few of them have much to say about equity. Cost-beneﬁt
analysis can, for example, be modiﬁed to weight the interests ofsome people more than others. The discount rate can be viewed,
in long-term analyses, as a means of weighing the welfare of
future generations; and the precautionary principle can be
expressed in terms of reducing the exposure of certain populations or systems whose preferential status may be the result of
equity considerations. Only multicriteria analysis was designed
primarily to accommodate optimization across multiple
objectives with complex interactions, but this can also be
adapted to consider equity and threshold issues at national andsub-national scales. Finally, the existence and signiﬁcance of various thresholds for change can be explored by several tools, but
only the precautionary principle was designed explicitly toaddress such issues.
Scenarios provide one way to cope with many aspects ofuncertainty, but our limited understanding of ecological systems and human responses shrouds any individual scenario in
it own characteristic uncertainty (R4.ES). Scenarios can be used
to highlight the implications of alternative assumptions about
critical uncertainties related to the behavior of human and ecological systems. In this way, they provide one means to cope withmany aspects of uncertainty in assessing responses. The relevance, signiﬁcance, and inﬂuence of scenarios ultimately depend
on who is involved in their development (SG9.ES).
At the same time, though, there are a number of reasons to be
cautious in the use of scenarios. First, individual scenarios represent conditional projections based on speciﬁc assumptions. Thus,to the extent that our understanding and representation of the ecological and human systems represented in the scenarios is limited,
speciﬁc scenarios are characterized by their own uncertainty. Second, there is uncertainty in translating the lessons derived fromscenarios developed at one scale—say, global—to the assessment ofresponses at other scales—say, sub-national. Third, scenarios often
have hidden and hard-to-articulate assumptions. Fourth, environmental scenarios have tended to more effectively incorporate stateof-the-art natural science modeling than social science modeling.
Historically, most responses addressing ecosystem services
have concentrated on the short-term beneﬁts from increasing
the productivity of provisioning services (RWG). Far lessemphasis has been placed on managing regulating, cultural, andsupporting ecosystem services; on management goals related topoverty alleviation and equitable distribution of beneﬁts from100 Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i secosystem services; and on the long-term consequences of ecosystem change on the provision of services. As a result, the current
management regime falls far short of the potential for meeting
human needs and conserving ecosystems.
Effective management of ecosystems requires coordinatedresponses at multiple scales (SG9, R17.ES). Responses thatare successful at a small scale are often less successful at higher
levels due to constraints in legal frameworks and government
institutions that prevent their success. In addition, there appear
to be limits to scaling up, not only because of these higher-level
constraints, but also because interventions at a local level often
address only direct drivers of change rather than indirect orunderlying ones. For example, a local project to improve livelihoods of communities surrounding a protected area in order toreduce pressure on it, if successful, may increase migration into
buffer zones, thereby adding to pressures. Cross-scale responses
may be more effective at addressing the higher-level constraints
and leakage problems and simultaneously tackling regional andnational as well as local-level drivers of change. Examples ofsuccessful cross-scale responses include some co-management
approaches to natural resource management in ﬁsheries andforestry and multistakeholder policy processes (R15.ES).
Active adaptive management can be a particularly valuable
tool for reducing uncertainty about ecosystem management
decisions (R17.4.5). The term “active” adaptive management
is used here to emphasize the key characteristic of the original
concept (which is frequently and inappropriately used to mean“learning by doing”): the design of management programs totest hypotheses about how components of an ecosystem function and interact and to thereby reduce uncertainty about thesystem more rapidly than would otherwise occur. Under anadaptive management approach, for example, a ﬁsheries manager might intentionally set harvest levels either lower orhigher than the “best estimate” in order to gain information
more rapidly about the shape of the yield curve for the ﬁshery.
Given the high levels of uncertainty surrounding coupledsocioecological systems, the use of active adaptive management
is often warranted.

9. What are the most important uncertainties hindering

decision-making concerning ecosystems?

T

he MA was unable to provide adequate scientiﬁc information to answer a number of important policy questions
related to ecosystem services and human well-being. In somecases, the scientiﬁc information may well exist already but theprocess used and time frame available prevented either access tothe needed information or its assessment. But in many cases
either the data needed to answer the questions were unavailable
or the knowledge of the ecological or social system was inadequate. We identify the following information gaps that, if
addressed, could signiﬁcantly enhance the ability of a process likethe MA to answer policy-relevant questions posed by decisionmakers (CWG, SWG, RWG, SGWG).

Condition and Trends
tems that result in the absence of well-documented, comparable,
time-series information for many ecosystem features and thatpose signiﬁcant barriers in assessing condition and trends in ecosystem services. Moreover, in a number of cases, includinghydrological systems, the condition of the monitoring systems
that do exist is declining.
■ Although for 30 years remote sensing capacity has been
available that could enable rigorous global monitoring ofland cover change, ﬁnancial resources have not been available to process this information, and thus accurate measurements of land cover change are only available on acase study basis.
■ Information on land degradation in drylands is extremely
poor. Major shortcomings in the currently available assessments point to the need for a systematic global monitoring program, leading to the development of a scientiﬁcallycredible, consistent baseline of the state of land degradation and desertiﬁcation.
■ There is little replicable data on global forest extent thatcan be tracked over time.
■ There is no reasonably accurate global map of wetlands.
■ There are major gaps in information on nonmarketed
ecosystem services, particularly regulating, cultural, and supporting services.
■ There is no complete inventory of species and limited
information on the actual distributions of many important plant
and animal species.
■ More information is needed concerning:■ the nature of interactions among drivers in particularregions and across scales;■ the responses of ecosystems to changes in the availabilityof important nutrients and carbon dioxide;

KEITH WEILER/USDA■ There are major gaps in global and national monitoring sys-nonlinear changes in ecosystems, predictability of thresholds, and structural and dynamic characteristics of systems
that lead to threshold and irreversible changes; and,■ quantiﬁcation and prediction of the relationships between
biodiversity changes and changes in ecosystem services forparticular places and times.
■

Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s 101

■ There is limited information on the economic consequences■ There is limited capability of communicating to nonspecial-of changes in ecosystem services at any scale and, more generally,
limited information on the details of linkages between humanwell-being and the provision of ecosystem services, except in thecase of food and water.
■ There are relatively few models of the relationship between
ecosystem services and human well-being.

ists the complexity associated with holistic models and scenarios
involving ecosystem services, in particular in relation to theabundance of nonlinearities, feedbacks, and time lags in mostecosystems.

Scenarios■ There is a lack of analytical and methodological approaches

to explicitly nest or link scenarios developed at different geographic scales. This innovation would provide decision-makers
with information that directly links local, national, regional, andglobal futures of ecosystem services in considerable detail.
■ There is limited modeling capability related to effects ofchanges in ecosystems on ﬂows of ecosystem services and effects
of changes in ecosystem services on changes in human wellbeing. Quantitative models linking ecosystem change to many
ecosystem services are also needed.
■ Signiﬁcant advances are needed in models that link ecological and social processes, and models do not yet exist for many
cultural and supporting ecosystem services.
■ There is limited capability to incorporate adaptive responses
and changes in human attitudes and behaviors in models andto incorporate critical feedbacks into quantitative models. As
food supply changes, for example, so will patterns of land use,which will then feed back on ecosystem services, climate, andfood supply.
■ There is a lack of theories and models that anticipate thresholds that, once passed, yield fundamental system changes or evensystem collapse.

102 Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s

Response Options■ There is limited information on the marginal costs andbeneﬁts of alternative policy options in terms of total economic
value (including nonmarketed ecosystem services).
■ Substantial uncertainty exists with respect to who beneﬁts
from watershed services and how changes in particular watersheds inﬂuence those services; information in both of these areas
is needed in order to determine whether markets for watershed
services can be a fruitful response option.
■ There has been little social science analysis of the effectiveness of responses on biodiversity conservation.
■ There is considerable uncertainty with regards to the importance people in different cultures place on cultural services, how
this changes over time, and how it inﬂuences the net costs andbeneﬁts of trade-offs and decisions.

Appendixes
Appendix A

Ecosystem Service Reports
This Appendix presents some of the main ﬁndings from the Condition and Trends Working Group andthe Scenarios Working Group for a selected set of ecosystem services addressed in the Millennium
Ecosystem Assessment.

Food

Provisioning Service

P

eople obtain food from highly managed systems such as
crops, livestock, and aquaculture and also from wild sources,
including freshwater and marine capture ﬁsheries and the harvesting of wild plants and animals (bushmeat, for example).

Condition and Trends■ Food production more than doubled (an increase of over160%) from 1961 to 2003 (C8.1). (See Appendix Figure A.1.)
Over this period, production of cereals—the major energy
component of human diets—has increased almost two and ahalf times, beef and sheep production increased by 40%,
pork production by nearly 60%, and poultry production
doubled (C8.ES).
■ Over the past 40 years, globally, intensiﬁcation of cultivatedsystems has been the primary source (almost 80%) of increased
output. But some countries, predominantly found in subSaharan Africa, have had persistently low levels of productivity,and continue to rely on expansion of cultivated area. For all
developing countries over the period 1961–99, expansionof harvested land contributed only 29% to growth in crop
production versus the contribution of increases in yields, whichamounted to 71%; in sub-Saharan Africa, however, yield
increases accounted for only 34% of growth in production(C26.ES, C26.1.1).
■ Both total and per capita ﬁsh consumption have grownover the past four decades. Total ﬁsh consumption has declined
somewhat in industrial countries, while it has nearly doubled in
the developing world since 1973 (C8.ES).
■ Demand for ﬁsh has risen more rapidly than production,
leading to increases in the real prices of most fresh and frozen
ﬁsh products (C8.ES).

Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s 103

Appendix Figure A.1. Trends in Key Indicators of Food Provision: 1961–2003 (C8 Figure 8.1)

Global Production, Prices, and Undernourishment
Globally, an estimated 852 million people were undernourished in 2000–02, up 37 million from the period 1997–99.
Only undernourishment in developing countries is plotted in this Figure.

300

250

1 200

Undernourished indeveloping countries
918

Total foodproduction

920
873

826

200

150

100

780

1 000
815
798

800

Food production
per capita
600

Food price

400

50

200

0

0

Sources: FAOSTATS, SOFI, Millennium Ecosystem Assessment

Relative Changes in Food Supply (Crops and Livestock): Industrial and Developing Countries
400

400

350

350

300

300

250

250

200

200

150

150

100

100

50

50

0

0

Sources: FAOSTATS, Millennium Ecosystem Assessment

104 Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s

■ Freshwater aquaculture is the fastest-growing foodproduction sector. Worldwide, it has increased at an averagecompounded rate of 9.2% per year since 1970, compared with
only 1.4% for capture ﬁsheries and 2.8% for terrestrial farmed
meat production systems (C26.3.1). Aquaculture systems now
account for roughly 27% of total ﬁsh production (C8 Table 8.4).
■ The level of global output of cereals has stagnated since
1996, so grain stocks have been in decline. Although there isconcern about these trends, they may reﬂect only a normal cycleof market adjustment (C8.2.2).
■ Although there has been some cereal price increase since2001, prices are still some 30–40% lower than their peak in the
mid-1990s (C8.2.2).
■ Current patterns of use of capture ﬁsheries are unsustainable.
Humans increased the capture of marine ﬁsh up until the
1980s by harvesting an ever-growing fraction of the available
resource. Marine ﬁsh landings are now declining as a result of theoverexploitation of this resource (C18.ES). Inland water ﬁsheries,
which are particularly important in providing high-quality dietsfor poor people, have also declined due to habitat modiﬁcation,
overﬁshing, and water withdrawals (C8.ES).
■ While traditional aquaculture is generally sustainable, anincreasing share of aquaculture uses carnivorous species, and thisputs increased pressure on other ﬁsheries to provide ﬁshmeal as
feed and also exacerbates waste problems. Shrimp farming often
results in severe damage to mangrove ecosystems, although somecountries have taken steps to reduce these harmful impacts.

Scenarios■ All four MA scenarios project increased total and per
capita global food production by 2050 (S9). On a per capita
basis, however, basic staple production stagnates or declines in
the Middle East and North Africa and increases very little in
sub-Saharan Africa for all four scenarios. Production shortfalls
are expected to be covered through increased food imports inthese regions. Agricultural land area continues to increase indeveloping countries under the MA scenarios, but declines inindustrial countries. (See Appendix Figure A.2.)■ Global demand for food crops (measured in tons) is projected to grow by 70–85% between 2000 and 2050 (S9.4.1).
■ Demand for both freshwater and marine ﬁsh will expand
because of increasing human population and changing food preferences, and the result will be an increasing risk of a major andlong-lasting decline of regional marine ﬁsheries (medium to highcertainty) (S9.ES).

Appendix Figure A.2. Changes in Agricultural Land

(Pasture and Cropland)
under MA Scenarios (S9 Fig 9.15)

Note that the total amount of pasture and cropland in 2000 plottedhere is greater than the amount shown in Table 1.1 due to the factthat extensive grazing lands are included in the statistics for pastureand cropland here and not in the statistics for cultivated systems inTable 1.1.

45

40

35

30

25

20

15

10

5

0
Source: Millennium Ecosystem Assessment

Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s 105

Water

Provisioning and Supporting Services

Water is both a provisioning service, since ecosystems are
the source of water used by people, and a supporting service, since water is required for life on Earth and thus supports
all other ecosystem processes. Forest and mountain ecosystems
are associated with the largest amounts of fresh water—57% and
28% of the total runoff, respectively. These systems each provide renewable water supplies to at least 4 billion people, or two
thirds of the global population. Cultivated and urban systems
generate only 16% and 0.2%, respectively, of global runoff, but
due to their close proximity to humans they serve from 4.5–5
billion people. Such proximity is associated with nutrient andindustrial water pollution (C7.ES).

Condition and Trends■ Recent changes to ecosystems have not signiﬁcantly reduced
the net amount of renewable freshwater runoff on Earth, but thefraction of that runoff used by humans has grown dramatically.
Global freshwater use expanded at a mean rate of 20% per decade
between 1960 and 2000, doubling over this time period (C7.ES).
■ Contemporary water withdrawal is approximately 10% of
global continental runoff, although this amounts to between 40%
and 50% of the continental runoff to which the majority of the
global population has access during the year (C7.ES, C7.2.3).
■ Inorganic nitrogen pollution of inland waterways has
increased more than twofold globally since 1960 and more than

Appendix Figure A.3. Unsustainable Water Withdrawals for Irrigation (C7 Fig 7.3)
Globally, roughly 15–35% of irrigation withdrawals are estimated to be unsustainable (low to medium certainty) (C7.2.2). The map indicates where
there is insufﬁcient fresh water to fully satisfy irrigated crop demands. The imbalance in long-term water budgets necessitates diversion of surface
water or the tapping of groundwater resources. The areas shown with moderate-to-high levels of unsustainable use occur over each continent andare known to be areas of aquifer mining or major water transfer schemes. Key: high overdraft, > 1 cubic kilometer per year; moderate, 0.1–1
cubic kilometer per year; low, 0–0.1 cubic kilometer per year. All estimates made on about 50-kilometer resolution. Though difﬁcult to generalize,
the imbalances translate into water table drawdowns >1.6 meters per year or more for the high overdraft case and <0.1 meter per year for low,
assuming water deﬁcits are met by pumping unconﬁned aquifers with typical dewatering potentials (speciﬁc yield = 0.2).

Source: Millennium Ecosystem Assessment

106 Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i stenfold for many industrialized parts of the world (C7.ES).
■ Current patterns of human use of water are unsustainable.
From 5% to possibly 25% of global freshwater use exceeds longterm accessible supplies and is met through engineered watertransfers or the overdraft of groundwater supplies (low to medium
certainty). More than 1 billion people live in areas without
appreciable supplies of renewable fresh water and meet theirwater needs in this way (C7.ES). In North Africa and the Middle
East, unsustainable use represents about a third of all water use(low certainty) (C7.ES).
■ Globally, 15–35% of irrigation withdrawals are estimatedto be unsustainable (low to medium certainty) (C7.2.2). (SeeAppendix Figure A.3.)

Scenarios■ Use of water is expected to grow by approximately 10%
between 2000 and 2010, compared with rates of 20% per decade
over the past 40 years (C7.ES).
■ Water withdrawals began to decline in many parts of theOECD at the end of the twentieth century, and with medium
certainty will continue to decline throughout the OECD during
the twenty-ﬁrst century because of saturation of per capita
demands, efﬁciency improvements, and stabilizing populations(S9.ES).
■ Water withdrawals are expected to increase greatly outside
the OECD as a result of economic development and population
growth. The extent of these increases is very scenario-dependent.
In sub-Saharan Africa, domestic water use greatly increases andthis implies (low to medium certainty) an increased access tofresh water. However, the technical and economic feasibility ofincreasing domestic water withdrawals is very uncertain (S9.ES).
■ Across all the MA scenarios, global water withdrawals
increase between 20% and 85% between 2000 and 2050. (S9 Fig
9.35) (See Appendix Figure A.4.)■ Global water availability increases under all MA scenarios.
By 2050, global water availability increases by 5–7% (dependingon the scenario), with Latin America having the smallest increase(around 2%, depending on the scenario), and the Former Soviet
Union the largest (16–22%) (S9.4.5). Increasing precipitation
tends to increase runoff, while warmer temperatures intensify
evaporation and transpiration, which tends to decrease runoff.

Appendix Figure A.4. Water Withdrawals in 2050

under MA Scenarios (S9 Fig 9.35)

Cubic kilometers per year

8 000

7 000

Order from
Strength
6 600

6 000

GlobalOrchestration
5 000

Adapting
Mosaic
5 500

5 100

TechnoGarden
4 400
4 000
Current global
annual water
withdrawal
3 600

3 000

2 000

1 000

0
Source: Millennium Ecosystem Assessment

Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s 107

Timber, Fiber, Fuel
Provisioning ServicesT

imber is harvested from forests and plantations and used fora variety of building, manufacturing, fuel, and other needs.
Forests (providing fuelwood and charcoal), agricultural crops,
and manure all serve as sources of biomass energy. A wide varietyof crops and livestock are used for ﬁber production. Cotton,
ﬂax, hemp, and jute are generally produced from agricultural
systems, while sisal is produced from the leaves of Agave cactus.
Silk is produced by silkworms fed the leaves of the mulberry tree,
grown in an orchard-like culture, and wool is produced by sheep,goats, alpaca, and other animals.
Appendix Figure A.5. Changes in Forest Area under

MA Scenarios (S9 Fig 9.15)

35

30

25

20

15

10

5

0
Source: Millennium Ecosystem Assessment

108 Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i sCondition and Trends■ Global timber harvests increased by 60% since 1960, andwood pulp production increased slightly less than threefold
over this same time (C9.ES, C9 Table 9.5). Rates of growth inharvests have slowed in recent years.
■ Fuelwood is the primary source of energy for heating andcooking for some 2.6 billion people, and 55% of global wood
consumption is for fuelwood (C9.ES). Although they account forless than 7% of world energy use, fuelwood and charcoal provide
40% of energy use in Africa and 10% in Latin America (C9.4).
■ Global consumption of fuelwood appears to have peakedin the 1990s and is now believed to be slowly declining as aresult of switching to alternate fuels and, to a lesser degree,
more-efﬁcient biomass energy technologies. In contrast, global
consumption of charcoal appears to have doubled between 1975
and 2000, largely as a result of continuing population shifts
toward urban areas (C9.4.1).
■ Localized fuelwood shortages in Africa impose burdens on
people who depend on fuelwood for home heating and cooking(SG3.4). The impact on people may be high prices in urban
areas or lengthy and arduous travel to collect wood in rural areas.
■ Among agricultural ﬁbers, global cotton production has
doubled and silk production has tripled since 1961 (C9.ES).
Despite this doubling of production, the land area on which
cotton is harvested has stayed virtually the same. Productionof ﬂax, wool, hemp, jute, and sisal has declined. For example,
competition from synthetic fabrics has contributed to a
reduction in the demand for wool in recent decades; wool
production declined 16% between 1980 and 2000 (C9.5.3).
Scenarios■ Plantations are likely to provide an increasing proportionof timber products in the future (C9.ES). In 2000, plantations
were 5% of the global forest cover, but they provided some 35%of harvested roundwood, an amount anticipated to increase to
44% by 2020. The most rapid expansion will occur in the midlatitudes, where yields are higher and production costs lower.
■ Under the MA scenarios, forest area increases in industrial
regions and decreases in developing ones between 1970 and
2050. In one scenario (Order from Strength), the rate of forest loss
increases from the historic rate (of about 0.4% annually between
1970 and 1995) to 0.6%. In Global Orchestration and Adapting
Mosaic, the rate of loss continues at the historic rate. Forest loss inTechnoGarden decreases in the ﬁrst decades of the scenario period,
but over the whole period is near the historic rate because the useof biofuels increases as part of climate change policies, leading tofurther pressure on forest area. (See Appendix Figure A.5.) (Forparticular ecosystems, such as tropical forests, deforestation rates
might be higher than average.)

Biochemicals and Genetic Resources
Provisioning Services

Awide variety of species—microbial, plant, and animal—
and their genes contribute to commercial products in suchindustries as pharmaceuticals, botanical medicines, crop
protection, cosmetics, horticulture, agricultural seeds, environmental monitoring and a variety of manufacturing andconstruction sectors.

Condition and Trends■ Biodiversity is in increasing demand as a source ofcommercial material. An overview of the industries involved,
trends in the use of biodiversity, and the types of social andcommercial beneﬁts is provided in Appendix Table A.1.
Appendix Table A.2 is a partial list of compounds derived

from natural sources approved for marketing within thepharmaceutical industry in the 1990s.

Scenarios■ Market trends vary widely according to the industry andcountry involved, but many bioprospecting activities andrevenues are expected to increase over the next decades. Several
major new industries, such as bioremediation and biomimetics,
are well established and appear set to increase, while others havea less certain future. The current economic climate suggests thatpharmaceutical bioprospecting will increase, especially as new
methods that use evolutionary and ecological knowledge enhance
productivity (C10.ES).

Appendix Table A.1. A Summary of Status and Trends in Major Bioprospecting Industries (C10 Table 10.8)
Industry

Current
Involvement in
Bioprospecting

Expected
Trend in
Bioprospecting

Social
Beneﬁts

Commercial
Beneﬁts

Biodiversity
Resources

Pharmaceuticaltends to be cyclical

cyclical, possible
increasehuman health,employment

+++

P,A,M

Botanical

highincreasehuman health,employment+++

mostly P,A,M

Cosmetics
and natural
personal carehighincreasehuman healthand well-being

+++

P,A,M

Bioremediation

variableincreaseenvironmental
health++mostly M

Crop protection
and biologicalcontrolhighincreasefood supply,
environmental
health+++P,A,M

Biomimetics

variablevariable,increasing?

various++

P,A,M

Biomonitoring

variableincreaseenvironmental
health+P,A,M

Horticulture andseed industry

lowsteadyhuman wellbeing, foodsupply+++Pmediumincreaseenvironmental
health++P,A,M

Ecologicalrestoration

Legend: +++ = billion dollar, ++ = million dollar, + proﬁtable but amounts vary
P= plants, A = animals, M= microorganisms

Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s 109

Appendix Table A.2. Some Compounds from Natural Sources (Pure Natural Products, Semi-synthetic

Modiﬁcations, or the Pharmacophore is from a Natural Product) Approved forMarketing in the 1990s, in the United States and Elsewhere (C10 Table 10.2)

Generic

Brand Name

Developer

In the United States and elsewhere
Cladribine

Leustatin

Johnson & Johnson (Ortho Biotech)

Docetaxel

TaxotereRhône-Poulenc Rorer

Fludarabine

FludaraBerlexIdarubicin

Idamycin

Pharmacia & Upjohn

Irinotecan

Camptosar

Yakult Haisha

Paclitaxel

Taxol

Bristol-Myers Squibb

Pegaspargase

OncosparRhône-Poulenc

Pentostatin

NipentParke-Davis

Topotecan

Hycamtin

SmithKline BeechamVinorelbine

Navelbine

Lilly

Only outside the United States
Bisantrene

Wyeth Ayerst

Cytarabine ocfosfate

YamasaFormestaneCiba-Geigy

Interferon, gamma-la

Siu Valy

Miltefosine

Acta Medica

Porﬁmer sodium

Quadra Logic

Sorbuzoxane

Zeuyaku Kogyo

Zinostatin

Yamamouchi

110 Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i sClimate Regulation
Regulating ServicesE

cosystems, both natural and managed, exert a strong inﬂuenceon climate and air quality as sources and sinks of pollutants,
reactive gases, greenhouse gases, and aerosols and due to physicalproperties that affect heat ﬂuxes and water ﬂuxes (precipitation).
Ecosystems can affect climate in the following ways: warming (assources of greenhouse gases, for instance, or forests with lower
albedo than bare snow); cooling (as sinks of greenhouse gas,sources of some aerosol that reﬂect solar radiation, and evapotranspiration, for example); and by altering water redistribution/recycling and regional rainfall patterns (through evapotranspiration,for instance, or cloud condensation nuclei).

Condition and Trends■ Changes in ecosystems have made a large contribution tohistorical changes in radiative forcing from 1750 to the present
mainly due to deforestation, fertilizer use, and agricultural
practices (C13.ES). (See Appendix Figure A.6.) Ecosystemchanges account for about 10–30% of the radiative forcing of
CO2 since 1750 and a large proportion of the radiative forcing
due to CH4 and N2O. Ecosystems are currently a net sink for
CO2 and tropospheric ozone, while they remain a net sourceof CH4 and N2O. Future management of ecosystems has thepotential to modify concentrations of a number of greenhousegases, although this potential is likely to be small in comparison
to IPCC scenarios of fossil fuel emissions over the next century(high certainty). Ecosystems inﬂuence the main anthropogenic
greenhouse gases as follows:■ Carbon dioxide: About 40% of the historical emissions(over the last two centuries), and about 20% of current
CO2 emissions (in the 1990s), originated from changes inland use and land management, primarily deforestation.
Terrestrial ecosystems were a sink for about a third of
cumulative historical emissions and a third of total emissions in the 1990s (energy plus land use). The sink may be
explained partially by afforestation, reforestation, and forest
management in North America, Europe, China, and otherregions and partially by the fertilizing effects of N deposition and increasing atmospheric CO2. Terrestrial ecosystems were on average a net source of CO2 during thenineteenth and early twentieth centuries and became a net
sink sometime around the middle of the last century (highcertainty). The net impact of ocean biology changes on
global CO2 ﬂuxes is unknown.
■ Methane: Natural processes in wetland ecosystems accountfor about 25–30% of current methane emissions, andabout 30% of emissions are due to agriculture (ruminantanimals and rice paddies).
■ Nitrous oxide: Ecosystem sources account for about 90% of
current N2O emissions, with 35% of emissions from agricultural systems, primarily driven by fertilizer use.
■ Tropospheric ozone: Dry deposition in ecosystems accounts
for about half the tropospheric ozone sink. Several gases
emitted by ecosystems, primarily due to biomass burning,
act as precursors for tropospheric ozone formation (NOX,
volatile organic compounds, CO, CH4). The net global
effect of ecosystems is as a sink for tropospheric O3.

Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s 111

Appendix Figure A.6. Contribution of Ecosystems to Historical Radiative Forcing andCurrent Greenhouse Gas Emissions (C13 Fig 13.3)

Global mean radiative forcing
In watts per sq. meter
3

A. Historical Global Annual Mean Radiative Forcing, 1750 to 2000

Some ecosystem influence

Little or no ecosystem influence

2

CO2

WARMING1

Tropospheric
ozone

CH4

Mineraldust

Halocarbons

Black
carbonfromfossilfuelburning

Solar

N2O
0

Organic

COOLING

Biomassburning

–1

Land
use

Aerosolindirecteffect–2
LEVEL OF SCIENTIFICUNDERSTANDING

High High High

Medium

Very
low

Very
low

Very
low

Very
low

carbonStratospheric
from
ozone
fossilSulphatefuelburningHigh Medium Low

Very
low

Very
low

NB: The height of a bar indicates a best estimate of the forcing, and theaccompanying vertical black line a likely range of values. Where no bar is present,
the vertical line only indicates the range in best estimates with no likelihood.

ppmv CO2 equivalent
8

B. Contribution of Ecosystems
to Current Greenhouse Gas Emissions

Sources: IPCC, Millennium Ecosystem Assessment

6
SourceSourceInorganic
Biological

4
Net
Net

2

Source

0
Sink

-2
Sink

-4
Sink

-6

CO2

CH4

-8

112 Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s

N2O

Net

Figure A is the radiative forcing caused by changes in atmosphericcomposition, alteration in land surface reﬂectance (albedo), and variationin the output of the sun for the year 2000 relative to conditions in 1750.
The height of the bar represents a best estimate, and the accompanying
vertical line a likely range of values. Factors with a signiﬁcant ecosystem
inﬂuence are separated from those without one. The indirect effect ofaerosols shown is their effect on cloud droplet size and number, notcloud lifetime.
Figure B is the relative contribution of ecosystems to sources, sinks, andnet changes in three main greenhouse gases. These can be compared witheach other by conversion into CO2 -equivalent values, based on the global
warming potential (radiative impact times atmospheric lifetime) of
the different gases. For CH4 and N2O, a 100-year time scale was assumed;a short time scale would increase the relative value compared with CO2
and a longer time scale would reduce it. Ecosystems are also a net
sink for tropospheric ozone, but it is difﬁcult to calculate emissions in
CO2 -equivalent values.

■ During much of the past century, most cropping systems

have undergone a steady net loss of soil organic matter. However,with the steady increase in crop yields, which increases crop biomass and the amount of residue returned to the soil, and withthe adoption of conservation tillage and no-till cropping systems,
net carbon sequestration is estimated to occur in the maize-soybean systems of North America and in some continuous irrigatedlowland rice systems. Agriculture accounts for 44% of anthropogenic methane emissions and about 70% of anthropogenic
nitrous oxide gases, mainly from the conversion of new land to
agriculture and nitrogen fertilizer use (C26.2.6).
■ Terrestrial and marine plants ﬁx atmospheric CO2 andreturn it via respiration. In the ocean, some of the carbon sinksin the form of dead organisms, particles, and dissolved organiccarbon, a small amount of which remains in sediments; the rest
is respired at depth and eventually recirculated to the surface (the“biological pump”). The biological pump acts as a net sink forCO2 by increasing its concentration at depth, where it is isolated
from the atmosphere for decades to centuries, causing the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere to be about 200 parts per
million lower than it would be in the absence of life (C13.2.1).
On the land large amounts of carbon ﬁxed by plants are stored insoil organic matter.
■ Land cover changes since 1750 have increased the reﬂectivity
to solar radiation (albedo) of the land surface (medium certainty),
partially offsetting the warming effect of associated CO2 emissions(C13.ES). Deforestation and desertiﬁcation in the tropics andsub-tropics leads to a reduction in regional rainfall (high certainty).
Biophysical effects need to be accounted for in the assessment of
options for climate change mitigation. For example, the warming
effect of reforestation in seasonally snow-covered regions due toalbedo decrease is likely to exceed the cooling effect of additional

carbon storage in biomass. Biophysical effects of ecosystemchanges on regional climate patterns depend on geographicallocation and season. With high certainty:■ Deforestation in seasonally snow-covered regions leads toregional cooling of the land surface during the snow season
due to increase in surface albedo, and it leads to warming
during the summer due to reduction in evapotranspiration.
■ Large-scale tropical deforestation (hundreds of square kilometers) reduces regional rainfall, primarily due to decreased
evapotranspiration.
■ Desertiﬁcation in the tropics and sub-tropics leads todecrease in regional precipitation due to reduced evapotranspiration and increased surface albedo.

Scenarios■ The future contribution of terrestrial ecosystems to the regulation of climate is uncertain. Currently, the biosphere is a net
sink of carbon, absorbing about 1–2 gigatons of carbon per year,
or approximately 20% of fossil fuel emissions. It is very likelythat the future of this service will be greatly affected by expected
land use change. In addition, a higher atmospheric CO2 concentration is expected to enhance net productivity, but this does notnecessarily lead to an increase in the carbon sink. The limited
understanding of soil respiration processes generates uncertainty
about the future of the carbon sink. There is medium certainty
that climate change will increase terrestrial ﬂuxes of CO2 andCH4 in some regions (such as in Arctic tundras) (S9.ES).

Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s 113

Disease Regulation
Regulating Services

T

he availability of many ecosystem services, such as food,water, and fuel, can profoundly inﬂuence human health(R16). Here, we consider a much narrower service provided byecosystems related to human health: the role of ecosystems inregulating infectious disease. Ecosystem changes have played
an important role in the emergence or resurgence of infectious
diseases. (See Appendix Table A.3.) Ecosystem modiﬁcations associated with developments such as dam building and the expansionof agricultural irrigation, for example, have sometimes increased
the local incidence of infectious diseases such as malaria, schistosomiasis, and arbovirus infections, especially in the tropics. Other
modiﬁcations to ecosystems have served to reduce the incidence
of infectious disease.

Condition and Trends■ Infectious diseases still account for close to one quarter ofthe global burden of disease. Major tropical diseases, particularly
malaria, meningitis, leishmaniasis, dengue, Japanese encephalitis,
African trypanosomiasis, Chagas disease, schistosomiasis,ﬁlariasis, and diarrheal diseases still infect millions of people
throughout the world (very certain) (C14.ES).
■ The prevalence of the following infectious diseases isparticularly strongly inﬂuenced by ecological change: malaria
across most ecological systems; schistosomiasis, lymphatic ﬁlariasis,
and Japanese encephalitis in cultivated and inland water systems
in the tropics; dengue fever in tropical urban centers; leishmaniasis
and Chagas disease in forest and dryland systems; meningitis in
the Sahel; cholera in coastal, freshwater, and urban systems; andWest Nile virus and Lyme disease in urban and suburban systemsof Europe and North America (high certainty) (C14.ES).
■ Various changes to ecosystems can affect disease incidence
through a variety of mechanisms. Disease/ecosystem relationshipsthat best exemplify these biological mechanisms include thefollowing examples (C14.ES):■ Dams and irrigation canals provide ideal habitat for snails
that serve as the intermediate reservoir host species for
schistosomiasis; irrigated rice ﬁelds increase in the extent ofmosquito-breeding surface, increasing the chance of transmission of mosquito-borne malaria, lymphatic ﬁlariasis,
Japanese encephalitis, and Rift Valley fever.

114 Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i sDeforestation has increased the risk of malaria in Africa andSouth America by increasing habitat suitable for malariatransmitting mosquitoes.
■ Natural systems with preserved structure and characteristics
generally resist the introduction of invasive human andanimal pathogens brought by human migration and settlement. This seems to be the case for cholera, kala-azar, andschistosomiasis, which did not become established in the
Amazonian forest ecosystem (medium certainty).
■ Uncontrolled urbanization in the forest ecosystem has been
associated with mosquito-borne viruses (arboviruses) in the
Amazon and with lymphatic ﬁlariasis in Africa. Tropicalurban areas with poor water supply systems and lack ofshelter promote transmission of dengue fever.
■ There is evidence that habitat fragmentation, with subsequent biodiversity loss, increases the prevalence in ticks ofthe bacteria that causes Lyme disease in North America(medium certainty).
■ Zoonotic pathogens (deﬁned by their natural life cycle inanimals) are a signiﬁcant cause of both historical (such as
HIV and tuberculosis) and newly emerging infectious diseases affecting humans (such as SARS, West Nile virus, andHendra virus). In addition, zoonotic pathogens can cause
high case-fatality rates and are difﬁcult to vaccinate against,
since the primary reservoir hosts are nonhumans.
■ Intensive livestock agriculture that uses subtherapeutic
doses of antibiotics has led to the emergence of antibiotic-resistant strains of Salmonella, Campylobacter,and Escherichia coli bacteria. Overcrowded and mixed
livestock practices, as well as the trade in bushmeat, canfacilitate interspecies host transfer of disease agents,
leading to dangerous novel pathogens such as SARS
and new strains of inﬂuenza.
■

Scenarios■ Tropical developing countries are more likely to be affectedin the future due to the greater exposure of people in these countries to vectors of infectious disease transmission. Such populations have a scarcity of resources to respond to disease and toplan environmental modiﬁcations associated with economic
activities (high certainty). However, international trade and transport leave no country entirely unaffected (S11).
■ The health consequences under the MA scenarios related
to changes in the disease regulation service of ecosystems vary
widely, with some scenarios showing improving conditions andothers declining conditions (S11).

Appendix Table A.3. Importance of Infectious Diseases as Related to Ecosystem Changes (C14 Table 14.4)
Disease

Cases
Per
Yeara

Disabilityadjusted
Life Yearsb(thousands)(Proximate)
Emergence
Mechanism(Ultimate)
Emergence
DriverGeographical
Distribution

Expected Conﬁdence
Variation
Level
from
Ecological
ChangeMarlaria

350 m

46,486

niche invasion;
vector expansion

deforestation;water projects

tropical (America,
Asia, and Africa )

++++

+++

Dengue fever

80 m

616

vectorexpansionurbanization;
poor housing
conditions

tropical

+++

++

HIV

42 m

84,458host transfer

forestencroachment;
bushmeat hunting;human behavior

global+++Leishmaniasis

12 m

2090

host transfer;
habitat alteration

deforestation;
agriculturaldevelopment

tropicalAmericas; Europe
and Middle East

++++

+++

Lyme disease

23,763(US 2002)

depletion of
predators;
biodiversity loss;
reservoir expansion

habitatfragmentation

North America
and Europe++++

Chagas disease

16–18 m667

habitat alteration

deforestation;
urban sprawl andencroachment

Americas+++++Japanese
encephalitis

30–
50,000709

vectorexpansion

irrigated
rice ﬁelds

Southeast Asia

+++

+++

West Nile virus
and other
encephalitides––

Americas andEurasia+++

Guanarito;
Junin, Machupo––

biodiversity loss;
reservoir
expansion

monoculture in
agriculture after
deforestation

South America

++

+++

Oropouche/
Mayaro o virus
in Brazil––

vectorexpansion

forestencroachment;
urbanization

South America

+++

+++

Hantavirus––

variations in
population densityof natural foodsourcesclimatevariability++++

Rabies––biodiversity
loss; altered host
selection

deforestationand mining

tropical++++Schistosomiasis

120 m

1,702

intermediate
host expansion

dam building;irrigation

America, Africa,and Asia

++++

++++

Leptospirosis––

global (tropical)

++

+++

Cholera†¥sea surface
temperature risingclimate variability
and change

global (tropical)

+++

++

Cryptosporidiosis†¥

contamination
by oocystes

poor watershedmanagement
where livestock
exist

global+++++++(continued on page 116)
Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s 115

Appendix Table A.3. Importance of Infectious Diseases as Related to Ecosystem Changes (C14 Table 14.4) (continued)
Disease

Cases
Per
Yeara

Meningitis

Disabilityadjusted
Life Yearsb(thousands)(Proximate)
Emergence
Mechanism(Ultimate)
Emergence
DriverGeographical
Distribution

6,192

dust storms

desertiﬁcation

Saharan Africa++++

disturbing soils

climate variability

global

++

+++

+

+++

++

+++

+++

+

Coccidioidomycosis––

Lymphatic
Filariasis

120 m

5,777

tropical Americaand Africa

Trypanosomiasis

30–
500,000

1,525

AfricaOnchocerciasis

18 m

484

Africa andtropical America

Rift Valley Fever

heavy rains

climate variability
and change

AfricaNipah/Hendra
virusesniche invasionindustrial foodproduction;
deforestation;
climateabnormalities

Australia andSoutheast Asia

Salmonellosis

niche invasion

antibiotic resistancefrom using
antibiotics
in animal feed

Ebola

forestencroachment;
bushmeat hunting

BSE

host transfer

intensive
livestock farming

SARS

host transfer

intensive livestock
operations
mixing wild anddomestic animals

m = millions
Disability-adjusted life years: years of healthy life lost—a measure of disease burden for the gap between actual health of a populationcompared with an ideal situation where everyone lives in full health into old age.
† and ¥ Diarheal diseases (aggregated) deaths and DALYs respectively: 1,798 X 1,000 cases and 61,966 X 1,000 DALYsabLegend: + = low; ++ = moderate; +++ high; ++++ = very high116 Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i sExpected Conﬁdence
Variation
Level
from
Ecological
ChangeWaste Treatment
Regulating Services

Because the characteristics of both wastes and receiving ecosystems vary, environments vary in their ability to absorb wastes
and to detoxify, process, and sequester them. Some contaminants(such as metals and salts) cannot be converted to harmless materials, but others (organic chemicals and pathogens, for example) canbe degraded to harmless components. Nevertheless, these materials
may be released to the environment fast enough to modify ecosystem functioning signiﬁcantly. Some materials (such as nutrient
fertilizers and organic matter) are normal components of organism
metabolism and ecosystem processes. Nevertheless, loading rates ofthese materials may occur fast enough to modify and impair ecosystem function signiﬁcantly.

Condition and Trends■ The problems associated with wastes and contaminants arein general growing. Some wastes—sewage, for instance—are produced in nearly direct proportion to population size. Other types
of wastes and contaminants reﬂect the afﬂuence of society. An
afﬂuent society uses and generates a larger volume of waste-producing materials such as domestic trash and home-use chemicals(C15.ES).
■ Where there is signiﬁcant economic development, loadingsof certain wastes are expected to increase faster than population growth. The generation of some wastes (industrial waste,
for example) does not necessarily increase with population ordevelopment state. These wastes may often be reduced throughregulation aimed to encourage producers to clean discharges or
to seek alternate manufacturing processes (C15.ES).
■ In developing countries, 90–95% of all sewage and 70%
of industrial wastes are dumped untreated into surface water(C7.4.5). Regional patterns of processing nitrogen loads in freshwater ecosystems provide a clear example of the overloading of
the waste processing service of ecosystems.
■ Aquatic ecosystems “cleanse” on average 80% of theirglobal incident nitrogen loading but this intrinsic self-puriﬁcation capacity of these ecosystems varies widely and is notunlimited (C7.2.5).
■ Severe deterioration in the quality of fresh water is magniﬁed in cultivated and urban systems (high use, high pollution
sources) and in dryland systems (high demand for ﬂow regulation, absence of dilution potential) (C7.ES).

Scenarios■ It is neither possible nor appropriate to attempt to state
whether the intrinsic waste detoxiﬁcation capabilities of theplanet as a whole will increase or decrease with a changing
environment. The detoxiﬁcation capabilities of individual
locations may change with changing conditions (such as changes
in soil moisture levels). At high waste-loading rates, however,
the intrinsic capability of environments is overwhelmed, suchthat wastes will build up in the environment to the detriment of
human well-being and a loss of biodiversity (C15.ES).
■ The service of water puriﬁcation could be either enhanced
or degraded in both developing and industrial countries
under the MA Scenarios (S9.5.4). Within industrial countries,
the dilution capacity of most rivers increases because higher
precipitation leads to increases in runoff in most river basins.
Wetland areas decrease because of the expansion of population
and agricultural land. Wastewater ﬂows increase, but in somescenarios the wealth of the North enables it to repair breakdowns
in water puriﬁcation as they occur. Within developing countries,
the pace of ecosystem degradation, the overtaxing of ecosystems
by high waste loads, and the decline of wetland area because of
the expansion of population and agricultural land tend to drive adeterioration of water puriﬁcation in two scenarios. The Adapting
Mosaic scenario, however, could lead to some gains in water
puriﬁcation even in developing countries, and the TechnoGarden
scenario would also result in gains.

Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s 117

Natural Hazard Regulation
Regulating ServicesE

cosystems play important roles in modulating the effects ofextreme events on human systems. Ecosystems affect boththe probability and severity of events, and they modulate theeffects of extreme events. Soils store large amounts of water,
facilitate transfer of surface water to groundwater, and prevent or
reduce ﬂooding. Barrier beaches, wetlands, and lakes attenuate
ﬂoods by absorbing runoff peaks and storm surges.

Condition and Trends■ Humans are increasingly occupying regions and localities
that are exposed to extreme events, (such as on coasts andﬂoodplains or close to fuelwood plantations). These actions areexacerbating human vulnerability to extreme events, such as the
December 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean. Many measuresof human vulnerability show a general increase due to growing
poverty, mainly in developing countries (C16.ES).
■ Roughly 17% of all the urban land in the United States
is located in the 100-year ﬂood zone. Likewise, in Japan about
50% of the population lives on ﬂoodplains, which cover only
10% of the land area. In Bangladesh, the percentage of ﬂoodprone areas is much higher and inundation of more than half ofthe country is not uncommon. For example, about two thirds ofthe country was inundated in the 1998 ﬂood (C16.2.2).

118 Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s■ Many of the available datasets on extreme events show that
impacts are increasing in many regions around the world. From1992 to 2001, ﬂoods were the most frequent natural disaster(43% of 2,257 disasters), and they killed 96,507 people andaffected more than 1.2 billion people over the decade. Annual
economic losses from extreme events increased tenfold from the
1950s to the 1990s (C16.ES).
■ The loss of ecosystems such as wetlands and mangroves has
signiﬁcantly reduced natural mechanisms of protection fromnatural hazards. For example, forested riparian wetlands adjacentto the Mississippi River in the United States during presettlement
times had the capacity to store about 60 days of river discharge.
With the removal of wetlands through canalization, leveeing,
and draining, the remaining wetlands have a storage capacity ofless than 12 days discharge—an 80% reduction of ﬂood storage
capacity (C16.1.1).
■ The number of ﬂoods and ﬁres increased signiﬁcantly on
all continents over the past 60 years. (See Appendix Figures A.7
and A.8.)■ Within industrial countries, the area burned by ﬁres isdeclining but the number of major ﬁres is increasing. In the
United States, for example, the area burned has declined bymore than 90% since 1930, while in Sweden the area burned
annually fell from about 12,000 hectares in 1876 to about 400
hectares in 1989. In North America, however, the number ofﬁre “disasters”—10 or more people reportedly killed, 100 people
reportedly affected, a declared state of emergency, and a call forinternational assistance—increased from about 10 in the 1980s
to about 45 during the 1990s (C16.2.2).

Appendix Figure A.7. Number of Flood Events by Continent and Decade Since 1950 (C16 Fig 16.6)

Floods
350

2000

300
250
200

2000

150

2000

100

2000

1950

1950

50

Europe

1950

0

Asia

America

1950

1950

2000

Oceania

AfricaSource: Millennium Ecosystem Assessment

Appendix Figure A.8. Number of Major Wild Fires by Continent and Decade Since 1950 (C16 Fig 16.9)

Wild fires

50
2000
40

2000

30
2000

20

10

1950
1950

Europe1950
2000

America1950

Africa

2000

Asia

0

1950

Oceania

Source: Millennium Ecosystem Assessment

Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s 119

Cultural Services

Human cultures, knowledge systems, religions, social interactions, and amenity services have been inﬂuenced andshaped by the nature of ecosystems. At the same time, humankind has inﬂuenced and shaped its environment to enhance theavailability of certain valued services. Recognizing that it is notpossible to fully separate the different spiritual, intellectual, andphysical links between human cultures and ecosystems, the MA
assessed six main types of cultural and amenity services provided
by ecosystems: cultural diversity and identity; cultural landscapesand heritage values; spiritual services; inspiration (such as for artsand folklore); aesthetics; and recreation and tourism. Because
global aggregated information on the condition of cultural services was limited (with the partial exception of recreational andtourism beneﬁts), the section below draws signiﬁcantly on information in the MA sub-global assessments.

Condition and Trends■ Transformation of once diverse ecosystems into relatively
more similar cultivated landscapes, combined with social andeconomic changes including rapid urbanization, breakdownof extended families, loss of traditional institutions, easierand cheaper transportation, and growing economic and social“globalization,” has signiﬁcantly weakened the linkages between
ecosystems and cultural diversity and cultural identity (C17.2.1).
Throughout human evolution, human societies have developed
in close interaction with the natural environment, which has
shaped their cultural identity, value systems, and language.
■ The loss of particular ecosystem attributes (sacred species
or sacred forests), combined with social and economic changes,
can sometimes weaken the spiritual beneﬁts people obtain fromecosystems in many parts of the world (C17.2.3). On the other
hand, under some circumstances (such as where ecosystem
attributes are causing signiﬁcant threats to people) the loss of some
attributes may enhance spiritual appreciation for what remains.
■ People across cultures and regions express, in general, anaesthetic preference for natural environments over urban or
built ones; the conversion and degradation of relatively naturalenvironments has diminished these beneﬁts. Ecosystems
continue to inspire arts, songs, drama, dance, design, andfashion, although the stories told through such media aredifferent from those told historically (C17.2.5).
■ Recreation and tourism uses of ecosystems are growing,
due to growing populations, greater leisure time available among
wealthy populations, and greater infrastructure development
to support recreational activities and tourism. Nature travelincreased at an estimated rate of 10–30% annually in the early
1990s, and in 1997 nature tourism accounted for approximately
20% of total international travel (C17.2.6). Tourism is now
the primary economic development strategy for a number ofdeveloping countries.

120 Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s■ Tourism is an important component of the economies ofmany of the MA sub-global assessment study areas, and at all
scales most assessment stakeholders requested its inclusion. In
contrast, spiritual, religious, recreational, and educational services
tended to be assessed only at a ﬁne scale in small local studies,typically because the data required for these assessments are notavailable at a broad scale and because of the culture-speciﬁc,intangible, and sometimes sensitive nature of these services(SG8.3).
■ Within the MA sub-global assessments, cultural services of
tourism and recreation were generally in a good condition andgrowing, although some assessments expressed concerns about
tourist activities potentially reducing the capacity of ecosystems
to provide this cultural service (SG8.3).
■ In contrast, within the MA sub-global assessments localscale services of a spiritual nature are of a variable condition,
typically either collapsing or being revived, depending on
policies, interventions, and context-speciﬁc factors such aschanges in leadership (SG8.3). Spiritual values were foundto act as strong incentives for ecosystem conservation in subglobal assessments in Peru, Costa Rica, India, and some partsof Southern Africa. Educational services of ecosystems assessed
in Sweden, São Paulo, and Portugal are all increasing due to
growing levels of awareness of the value and beneﬁts of, and thus
the demand for, environmental education.
■ While provisioning services such as water, medicinal plants,
fuelwood, and food are very important, spiritual and sacred
elements in the local landscape also have a very speciﬁc andimportant value to local people across all the assessments. In
several cases, spiritual values coincided with other values, such as
biodiversity, water supply, biomedicines, and fuel (SG11.3).

Scenarios■ The MA Scenarios project changes in cultural services based
only on a qualitative analyses due to the absence of suitable
quantitative models. Cultural services increase in some scenariosand decline in others. Generally, cultural services decline
moderately in Global Orchestration and strongly in Order from
Strength, driven in both cases by lack of personal experience withnature and lower cultural diversity. Lower cultural diversity also
drives a decline in cultural services in the TechnoGarden scenario.
On the other hand, cultural services increase in Adapting Mosaic,
due in part to the increase in knowledge systems and cultural
diversity (S9.7).

Nutrient Cycling
Supporting Services

An adequate and balanced supply of elements necessary
for life, provided through the ecological processes ofnutrient cycling, underpins all other ecosystem services. The
cycles of several key nutrients have been substantially alteredby human activities over the past two centuries, with important positive and negative consequences for a range of otherecosystem services and for human well-being. Nutrients aremineral elements such as nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassiumthat are essential as raw materials for organism growth anddevelopment. Ecosystems regulate the ﬂows and concentrations of nutrients through a number of complex processes thatallow these elements to be extracted from their mineral sources(atmosphere, hydrosphere, or lithosphere) or recycled fromdead organisms. This service is supported by a diversity ofdifferent species.

Condition and Trends■ The capacity of terrestrial ecosystems to absorb and retain
the nutrients supplied to them either as fertilizers or from thedeposition of airborne nitrogen and sulfur has been underminedby the radical simpliﬁcation of ecosystems into large-scale, lowdiversity agricultural landscapes. Excess nutrients leak into thegroundwater, rivers, and lakes and are transported to the coast.
Treated and untreated sewage released from urban areas adds tothe load (C.SDM).
■ In preindustrial times, the annual ﬂux of nitrogen from theatmosphere to the land and aquatic ecosystems was roughly 110–
210 teragrams of nitrogen a year. Human activity contributes
an additional 165 teragams or so of nitrogen per year, roughly
doubling the rate of creation of reactive N on the land surfaces ofEarth (R9.2). (See Appendix Figure A.9.)

Appendix Figure A.9. Contrast between Contemporary and Pre-disturbance Transports of Total Nitrogenthrough Inland Aquatic Systems Resulting from Anthropogenic Acceleration of This
Nutrient Cycle (C7 Fig 7.5)

While the peculiarities of individual pollutants, rivers, and governance deﬁne the speciﬁc character of water pollution, the general patterns observed
for nitrogen are representative of anthropogenic changes to the transport of waterborne constituents. Elevated contemporary loadings to one partof the system (such as croplands) often reverberate to other parts of the system (to coastal zones, for example), exceeding the capacity of natural
systems to assimilate additional constituents.

Source: Millennium Ecosystem Assessment

Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s 121

■ The N accumulation on land and in waters has permitted■ In contrast to these issues associated with nutrient oversupply,a large increase in food production in some countries, but atthe cost of increased emissions of greenhouse gases and frequent
deterioration in freshwater and coastal ecosystem services, such as
water quality, ﬁsheries, and amenity values (C12.ES).
■ Phosphorus is also accumulating in ecosystems at a rate of
10.5–15.5 teragrams per year, compared with a preindustrial rateof 1–6 teragrams per year, mainly as a result of the use ofphosphorus (obtained through mining) in agriculture. Most of
this accumulation is in soils. If these soils erode into freshwater
systems, deterioration of ecosystem services can result. Thistendency is likely to spread and worsen over the next decades, sincelarge amounts of P have been accumulated on land and theirtransport to water systems is slow and difﬁcult to prevent (C12.ES).
■ Sulfur emissions have been progressively reduced in Europe
and North America but not yet in the emerging industrial areasof the world: China, India, South Africa, and the southern partsof South America. A global assessment of acid deposition threatssuggests that tropical ecosystems are at high risk (C12.ES).
■ Human actions at all scales required to feed the current world
population have increased the “leakiness” of ecosystems withrespect to nutrients. Tillage often damages soil structure, and theloss of biodiversity may increase nutrient leaching. Simpliﬁcationof the landscape and destruction of riparian forests, wetlands, andestuaries allow unbuffered ﬂows of nutrients between terrestrial
and water ecosystems. Speciﬁc forms of biodiversity are critical toperforming the buffering mechanisms that ensure the efﬁcient use
and cycling of nutrients in ecosystems (C12.ES).

there remain large parts of Earth, notably in Africa and Latin
America, where harvesting without nutrient replacement has led toa depletion of soil fertility, with serious consequences for humannutrition and the environment (C12.ES).

122 Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s

Scenarios■ Recent scenario studies that include projections of nitrogen
fertilizer use indicate an increase of between 10% and 80% (ormore) by 2020 (S9.3.7).
■ Three out of four MA scenarios project that the global ﬂux
of nitrogen to coastal ecosystems will increase by a further 10–
20% by 2030 (medium certainty). River nitrogen will not change
in most industrial countries, while a 20–30% increase is projected for developing countries. This is a consequence of increasing nitrogen inputs to surface water associated with urbanization,
sanitation, development of sewerage systems, and lagging wastewater treatment, as well as increasing food production and associated inputs of nitrogen fertilizer, animal manure, atmosphericnitrogen deposition, and biological nitrogen ﬁxation in agricultural systems. Growing river nitrogen loads will lead to increased
incidence of problems associated with eutrophication in coastal
seas (S9.3.7).

Appendix B

Effectiveness of Assessed Responses

A

response is considered to be effective when its assessment
indicates that it has enhanced the particular ecosystem service (or, in the case of biodiversity, its conservation and sustainable use) and contributed to human well-being without
signiﬁcant harm to other ecosystem services or harmful impacts
to other groups of people. A response is considered promisingeither if it does not have a long track record to assess but appears
likely to succeed or if there are known means of modifying the
response so that it can become effective. A response is considered
problematic if its historical use indicates either that it has not
met the goals related to service enhancement (or conservationand sustainable use of biodiversity) or that it has caused signiﬁcant harm to other ecosystem services. Labeling a response as
effective does not mean that the historical assessment has not
identiﬁed problems or harmful trade-offs. Such trade-offs almost
always exist, but they are not considered signiﬁcant enough as tonegate the effectiveness of the response. Similarly, labeling a
response as problematic does not mean that there are no promising opportunities to reform the response in a way that can meetits policy goals without undue harm to ecosystem services.
The typology of responses presented in the Table in thisAppendix is defined by the nature of the intervention, classified as follows: institutional and legal (I), economic andincentives (E), social and behavioral (S), technological (T),and knowledge and cognitive (K). Note that the dominantclass is given in the Table. The actors who make decisions to
implement a response are governments at different levels,
such as international (GI) (mainly through multilateralagreements or international conventions), national (GN),and local (GL); the business/industry sector (B); and civilsociety, which includes nongovernmental organizations(NGO), community-based and indigenous peoples organizations (C), and research institutions (R). The actors are notnecessarily equally important.
The table includes responses assessed for a range of ecosystem services—food, fresh water, wood, nutrient management, flood and storm control, disease regulation, andcultural services. It also assesses responses for biodiversity
conservation, integrated responses, and responses addressing
one specific driver: climate change.

Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s 123

NotesRequired Actors

Problematic

PromisingResponse

Effective

EffectivenessType of Response

Appendix B. Effectiveness of Assessed Responses

Biodiversity conservation and sustainable use
Protected areas

PAs are extremely important in biodiversity and ecosystem conservation programs,
especially in sensitive environments that contain valuable biodiversity components. At
global and regional scales, existing PAs are essential but not sufﬁcient to conserve
the full range of biodiversity. PAs need to be better located, designed, and managed
to ensure representativeness and to deal with the impacts of human settlement within
them, illegal harvesting, unsustainable tourism, invasive species, and climate change.
They also need a landscape approach that includes protection outside of PAs. (R5)

I

GI
GN
GL
NGO
C
R

Helping local people tocapture biodiversity
beneﬁts

Providing incentives for biodiversity conservation in the form of beneﬁts for local
people (e.g., through products from single species or from ecotourism) has proved
to be very difﬁcult. Programs have been more successful when local communities havebeen in a position to make management decisions consistent with overall biodiversity
conservation. “Win-win” opportunities for biodiversity conservation and beneﬁts for
local communities exist, but local communities can often achieve greater beneﬁts fromactions that lead to biodiversity loss. (R5)

E

GN
GL
B
NGO
C

Promoting better
management of wild
species as aconservation tool,
including ex situ
conservation

More effective management of individual species should enhance biodiversity
conservation and sustainable use. “Habitat-based” approaches are critical, but theycannot replace “species-based” approaches. Zoos, botanical gardens, and other exsitu programs build support for conservation, support valuable research, and provide
cultural beneﬁts of biodiversity. (R5)

T
S

GN
S
NGO
R

Integrating biodiversity
into regional planning

Integrated regional planning can provide a balance among land uses that promotes
effective trade-offs among biodiversity, ecosystem services, and other needs ofsociety. Great uncertainty remains as to what components of biodiversity persist under
different management regimes, limiting the current effectiveness of this approach. (R5)

I

GN
GL
NGO

Encouraging privatesector involvement inbiodiversity
conservation

Many companies are preparing their own biodiversity action plans, managing theirlandholdings in ways that are more compatible with biodiversity conservation,
supporting certiﬁcation schemes that promote more sustainable use, and accepting
their responsibility for addressing biodiversity issues. The business case that has been
made for larger companies needs to be extended to other companies as well. (R5)

I

NG
B
NGO
R

Including biodiversity
issues in agriculture,
forestry, and ﬁsheries

More-diverse production systems can be as effective as low-diversity systems, or evenmore effective. And strategies based on more intensive production rather than on the
expansion of the area allow for better conservation. (R5)

T

NG
B

Designing governanceapproaches to support
biodiversity

Decentralization of biodiversity management in many parts of the world has hadvariable results. The key to success is strong institutions at all levels, with secure
tenure and authority at local levels essential to providing incentives for sustainable
management. (R5)

I

GI
GN
GL
R

Promoting international
cooperation throughmultilateral environmental agreements

MEAs should serve as an effective means for international cooperation in the areasof biodiversity conservation and sustainable use. They cover the most pressing drivers
and issues related to biodiversity loss. Better coordination among conventions would
increase their usefulness. (R5,15)

I

GI
GN

Environmental
education andcommunication

Environmental education and communication programs have both informed andchanged preferences for biodiversity conservation and have improved implementationof biodiversity responses. Providing the human and ﬁnancial resources to undertake
effective work in this area is a continuing barrier. (R5)

S

GN
GL
NGO
C

124 Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i sNotesRequired Actors

Type of Response

Problematic

PromisingResponse

Effective

Effectiveness

Food
Globalization, trade,and domestic andinternational policies
on food

Government policies related to food production (price supports and various types of
payments, or taxes) can have adverse economic, social, and environmental effects.
(R6)

E

GI
GN
B

Knowledge andeducation

Further research can make food production socially, economically, and environmentally
sustainable. Public education should enable consumers to make informed choices
about nutritious, safe, and affordable food. (R6)

S
K

GN
GL
NGO
C

Technologicalresponses, including
biotechnology, precision
agriculture, andorganic farming

New agricultural sciences and effective natural resource management could support
a new agricultural revolution to meet worldwide food needs. This would help
environmental, economic, and social sustainability. (R6)

T

GN
B
R

Water management

Emerging water pricing schemes and water markets indicate that water pricing can bea means for efﬁcient allocation and responsible use. (R6)

E

GN
GL
B
NGO

Fisheries management

Strict regulation of marine ﬁsheries both regarding the establishment and implementation of quotas and steps to address unreported and unregulated harvest. Individualtransferable quotas also show promise for coldwater, single-species ﬁsheries but
they are unlikely to be useful in multispecies tropical ﬁsheries. Given the potential
detrimental environmental impacts of aquaculture, appropriate regulatory mechanisms
need to supplement existing polices. (R6)

I
E

GN
GL
B
NGO

Livestock management

Livestock polices need to be reoriented in view of problems concerning overgrazing
and dryland degradation, rangeland fragmentation and loss of wildlife habitat, dust
formation, bush encroachment, deforestation, nutrient overload through disposal of
manure, and greenhouse gas emissions. Policies also need to focus on human healthissues related to diseases such as bird ﬂu and BSE. (R6)

T

GN
B

Recognition ofgender issues

Response policies need to be gender-sensitive and designed to empower womenand ensure access to and control of resources necessary for food security. This needs
to be based on a systematic analysis of gender dynamics and explicit considerationof relationships between gender and food and water security. (R6)

S

GN
NGO
C

Determining ecosystemwater requirements

In order to balance competing demands, it is critical that society explicitly agrees on
ecosystem water requirements (environmental ﬂows). (R7)

I T GN
GL
NGO
R

Rights to freshwater
services andresponsibilities
for their provision

Both public and private ownership systems of fresh water and of the land resources
associated with its provision have largely failed to create incentives for provision ofservices. As a result, upland communities have generally been excluded from accessto beneﬁts, particularly when they lack tenure security, and have resisted regulations
regarded as unfair. Effective property rights systems with clear and transparent rules
can increase stakeholders’ conﬁdence that they will have access to the beneﬁts offreshwater services and, therefore, their willingness to pay for them. (R7)I

Fresh water

GN
B
C(continued on page 126)
Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s 125

NotesRequired Actors

Problematic

PromisingResponse

Effective

EffectivenessType of Response

Appendix B. Effectiveness of Assessed Responses (continued)

Fresh water (continued)
Increasing theeffectiveness of public
participation indecision-making

Degradation of fresh water and other ecosystem services has a disproportionate
impact on those excluded from participation in decision-making. Key steps for improving
participatory processes are to increase the transparency of information, improve therepresentation of marginalized stakeholders, engage them in the establishment of policy
objectives and priorities for the allocation of freshwater services, and create space fordeliberation and learning that accommodates multiple perspectives. (R7)

I

GN
GL
NGO
C
R

River basinorganizations

RBOs can play an important role in facilitating cooperation and reducing transaction
costs of large-scale responses. RBOs are constrained or enabled primarily by
the degree of stakeholder participation, their agreement on objectives and management
plans, and their cooperation on implementation. (R7)

I

GI
GN
NGO

Regulatory responses

Regulatory approaches based on market-based incentives (e.g., damages for exceeding
pollution standards) are suitable for point-source pollutants. Regulatory approaches that
simply outlaw particular types of behavior can be unwieldy and burdensome and may failto provide incentives for protecting freshwater services. (R7)

I

GN
GL

Water markets

Economic incentives can potentially unlock signiﬁcant supply- and demand-side
efﬁciencies while providing cost-effective reallocation between old (largely irrigation)and new (largely municipal and instream) uses. (R7)

E

GI
GN
B

Payments forwatershed services

Payments for ecosystem services provided by watersheds have narrowly focused on
the role of forests in the hydrological regime. They should be based on the entire ﬂow
regime, including consideration of the relative values of other land cover and land uses,
such as wetlands, riparian areas, steep slopes, roads, and management practices. Key
challenges for payment schemes are capacity building for place-based monitoring andassessment, identifying services in the context of the entire ﬂow regime, considering
trade-offs and conﬂicts among multiple uses, and making uncertainty explicit. (R7)

E

GN
B
C

Partnerships andﬁnancing

There is a clear mismatch between the high social value of freshwater services andthe resources allocated to manage water. Insufﬁcient funding for water infrastructureis one manifestation of this. Focusing only on large-scale privatization to improve
efﬁciency and cost-recovery has proved a double-edged strategy—price hikes or control
over resources have created controversy and, in some cases, failure and withdrawal.
Development of water infrastructure and technologies must observe best practices
to avoid problems and inequities. The reexamination and retroﬁtting/refurbishment ofexisting infrastructure is the best option in the short and medium term. (R7)

IE

GI
GN
B
NGO
C

Large dams

The impact of large dams on freshwater ecosystems is widely recognized as being morenegative than positive. In addition, the beneﬁts of their construction have rarely beenshared equitably—the poor and vulnerable and future generations often fail to receive
the social and economic beneﬁts from dams. Preconstruction studies typically are overly
optimistic about the beneﬁts of projects and underestimate costs. (R7)T

GN

Wetland restoration

Although wetland restoration is a promising management approach, there are signiﬁcantchallenges in determining what set of management interventions will produce a desired
combination of wetland structure and function. It is unlikely that created wetlands canstructurally and functionally replace natural wetlands. (R7)

T

GN
GL
NGO
B

126 Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i sNotesRequired Actors

Type of Response

Problematic

PromisingResponse

Effective

Effectiveness

Wood, fuelwood, and non-wood forest productsInternational forest
policy processes anddevelopment assistanceInternational forest policy processes have made some gains within the forest sector.
Attention should be paid to integration of agreed forest management practices inﬁnancial institutions, trade rules, global environment programs, and global security
decision-making. (R8)

I

GI
GN
B

Trade liberalization

Forest product trade tends to concentrate decision-making power on (and beneﬁts from)forest management rather than spreading it to include poorer and less powerful players.
It “magniﬁes” the effect of governance, making good governance better and bad
governance worse. Trade liberalization can stimulate a “virtuous cycle” if the regulatory
framework is robust and externalities are addressed. (R8)

E

GI
GN

National forest
governance initiatives
and national forest
programs

Forest governance initiatives and country-led national forest programs show promise
for integrating ecosystem health and human well-being where they are negotiated bystakeholders and strategically focused. (R8)

I

GN
GL

Direct management offorests by indigenous
peoples

Indigenous control of traditional homelands is often presented as having environmental
beneﬁts, although the main justiﬁcation continues to be based on human and culturalrights. Little systematic data exist, but preliminary ﬁndings on vegetation cover andforest fragmentation from the Brazilian Amazon suggest that an indigenous control area
can be at least as effective as a strict-use protected area. (R8)

I

GL
C

Collaborative forest
management andlocal movements foraccess and use offorest products

Government-community collaborative forest management can be highly beneﬁcial but
has had mixed results. Programs have generated improved resource management
access of the rural poor to forest resources but have fallen short in their potential to
beneﬁt the poor. Local responses to problems of access and use of forest products
have proliferated in recent years. They are collectively more signiﬁcant than efforts led
by governments or international processes but require their support to spread. (R8)

I

GN
GL
B
NGO
C

Small-scale private andpublic-private ownershipand managementof forests

Where information, tenure, and capacity are strong, small private ownership of forests
can deliver more local economic beneﬁts and better forest management than ownershipby larger corporate bodies. (R8)

I

GL
B
C

Company-community
forestry partnerships

Company-community partnerships can be better than solely corporate forestry, or thansolely community or small-scale farm forestry, in delivering beneﬁts to the partners andthe public at large. (R8)

I

GL
B
C

Public andconsumer action

Public and consumer action has resulted in important forest and trade policy initiatives
and improved practices in large forest corporations. This has had an impact in “timberconsuming countries” and in international institutions. The operating standards of somelarge corporations and institutions, as well as of those whose non-forest activities havean impact on forests, have been improved. (R8)

S NGO
B
C

Third-party voluntary
forest certiﬁcation

Forest certiﬁcation has become widespread; however, most certiﬁed forests are in
the North, managed by large companies, and exporting to northern retailers. The
early proporents of certiﬁcation hoped it would be an effective response to tropicaldeforestation. (R8)IE

B

Wood technology
and biotechnology

Wood technology responses have focused on industrial plantation species withproperties suited for manufactured products. (R8)

T

NG
R
B

(continued on page 128)

Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s 127

NotesRequired Actors

Problematic

PromisingResponse

Effective

EffectivenessType of Response

Appendix B. Effectiveness of Assessed Responses (continued)

Wood, fuelwood, and non-wood forest products (continued)
Commercialization of
non-wood forest
products

Commercialization of NWFPs has had modest impacts on local livelihoods and has notalways created incentives for conservation. An increased value of NWFPs is not always
an incentive for conservation and can have the opposite effect. Incentives forsustainable management of NWFPs should be reconsidered, including exploration of
joint-production of timber and NWFPs. (R8)

E NGO
B
R

Natural forest
management in
the tropics

To be economic, sustainable natural forest management in the tropics must focus on a
range of forest goods and services, not just timber. The “best practices” of global
corporations should be assessed, exploring at the same time “what works” in traditional
forest management and the work of local (small) enterprises. Considerable interest hasdeveloped in the application of reduced-impact logging, especially in tropical forests, which
lowers environmental impacts and can also be more efﬁcient and cost-effective. (R8)

T

GI
GN
GL
B
NGO
C

Forest plantation
management

Farm woodlots and large-scale plantations are increasingly being established in a
response to growing wood demand and declining natural forest areas. Without adequate
planning and management, forest plantations can be established in the wrong sites,with the wrong species and provenances. In degraded lands, afforestation may deliver
economic, environmental, and social beneﬁts to communities and help reduce poverty
and enhancing food security. (R8)

T

GN
GL
B
NGO
R

Fuelwood management

Fuelwood remains one of the main products of the forest sector in the South. Iftechnology development continues, industrial-scale forest product fuels could becomea major sustainable energy source. (R8)

T

GL
B
C

Afforestation andreforestation for
carbon management

Although many early initiatives were based on forest conservation or management,
afforestation activities now predominate, perhaps reﬂecting the international decisionin 2001 to allow only afforestation and reforestation activities into the Clean
Development Mechanism for the ﬁrst commitment period. (R8)T E GIGN
B

Regulations

Mandatory policies, including regulatory control and tax or fee systems, place the costs
and burden of pollution control on the polluter. Technology-based standards are easy to
implement but may discourage innovation and are generally not seen as cost-effective.
(R9)

I

GI
GN

Market-based
instruments

Market-based instruments, such as ﬁnancial incentives, subsidies, and taxes, holdpotential for better nutrient management but may not be relevant in all countries
and circumstances. Relatively little is known empirically about the impact of these
instruments on technological change. (R9)

E

GN
B
R

Hybrid approaches

Combinations of regulatory, incentive, and market-based mechanisms are possible forboth national and watershed-based approaches and may be the most cost-effective andpolitically acceptable. (R9)

IE

GI
GN
GL
NGO
C, R

Historically, emphasis was on physical structures and measures over naturalenvironment and social institutions. This choice often creates a false sense of security,
encouraging people to accept high risks. Evidence indicates that more emphasis needs
to be given to the natural environment and nonstructural measures. (R11)

T

GN
B

Nutrient cycling

Flood and storm regulation
Physical structures

128 Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i sNotesRequired Actors

Type of Response

Problematic

PromisingResponse

Effective

Effectiveness

Flood and storm regulation (continued)
Use of naturalenvironment

Flood and storm impacts can be lessened through maintenance and management ofvegetation and through natural or humanmade geomorphological features (natural river
channels, dune systems, terrace farming). (R11)

T

GN
GL
NGO
C

Information, institutions,and education

These approaches, which emphasize disaster preparedness, disaster management,
ﬂood and storm forecasting, early warning, and evacuation, are vital for reducing
losses. (R11)S I GN
GL
B
C

Financial services

These responses emphasize insurance, disaster relief, and aid. Both social programs
and private insurance are important coping mechanisms for ﬂood disaster recovery.
They can, however, inadvertently contribute to community vulnerability by encouraging
development within ﬂoodplains or by creating cultures of entitlement. (R11)

E

GN
B

Land use planningLand use planning is a process of determining the most desirable type of land use.
It can help mitigate disasters and reduce risks by avoiding development in hazardprone areas. (R11)I

GN

Integrated vector
management

Reducing the transmission of infectious diseases often has effects on other ecosystems
services. IVM enables a coordinated response to health and the environment. IVM
uses targeted interventions to remove or control vector-breeding sites, disrupt vector
lifecycles, and minimize vector-human contact, while minimizing effects on otherecosystem services. IVM is most effective when integrated with socioeconomic
development. (R12)

I

GN
NGO

Environmental
management or
modiﬁcation to reduce
vector and reservoir
host abundance

Environmental management can be highly cost-effective and entail very low
environmental impacts. (R12)

I

GN
B
C
R

Biological control ornatural predators

Biological interventions can be highly cost-effective and entail very low environmental
impacts. Biological control may be effective if breeding sites are well known and limited
in number but less feasible where they are numerous. (R12)

T

GN
B
R

Chemical control

Insecticides remain an important tool and their selective use is likely to continue
within IVM. However, there are concerns regarding the impacts of insecticides,
especially persistent organic pollutants, on the environment and on human populations,particularly insecticide sprayers. (R12)

T

GN
B
R

Human settlement
patterns

The most basic management of human-vector contact is through improvements in theplacement and construction of housing. (R12)

T

GN
NGO
C

Health awarenessand behavior

Social and behavioral responses can help control vector-borne disease while also
improving other ecosystem services. (R12)S

C

Genetic modiﬁcation ofvector species to limit
disease transmission

New “cutting-edge” interventions, such as transgenic techniques, could be available
within the next 5–10 years. However, consensus is lacking in the scientiﬁc community
on the technical feasibility and public acceptability of such an approach. (R12)

T

GN
B
NGO
R

Disease regulation(continued on page 130)
Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s 129

NotesRequired Actors

Problematic

PromisingResponse

Effective

EffectivenessType of Response

Appendix B. Effectiveness of Assessed Responses (continued)

Cultural services
Awareness of the
global environment
and linking local andglobal institutions

Awareness of the planet working as a system has led to an integrated approach to
ecosystems. This process has emphasized the “human environment” concept and thediscussion of environmental problems at a global scale. Local organizations also takeadvantage of emerging global institutions and conventions to bring their case to wider
political arenas. (R14)SI

From restoring
landscapes to valuing
cultural landscapes

Landscapes are subject to and inﬂuenced by cultural perceptions and political andeconomic interests. This inﬂuences decisions on landscape conservation. (R14)S K GLNGO
C

Recognizing
sacred areas

While linking sacred areas and conservation is not new, there has been an increase intranslating “the sacred” into legislation or legal institutions granting land rights. Thisrequires extensive knowledge about the link between the sacred, nature, and society ina speciﬁc locale. (R14)

S

GL
NGO
C

International
agreements andconservation of
biological andagropastoral diversity

Increased exploitation and awareness concerning the disappearance of local resources
and knowledge has highlighted the need to protect local and indigenous knowledge.
Some countries have adopted speciﬁc laws, policies, and administrative arrangementsemphasizing the concept of prior informed consent of knowledge-holders. (R14)

I

GI
GN

Integrating local andindigenous knowledge

Local and indigenous knowledge evolves in speciﬁc contexts, and good care should betaken to not de-contextualize it. Conventional “best-practices” methods focusing oncontent may not be appropriate to deal with local or indigenous knowledge. (R14)K I GN
B
NGO

Compensating forknowledge

Compensation for the use of local and indigenous knowledge by third parties is an
important yet complicated response. The popular idea that local and indigenous
knowledge can be promoted by strengthening “traditional” authorities may not be valid
in many cases. (R14)E K GN
B
C

Property right changes

Communities beneﬁt from control over natural resources but traditional leadership may
not always be the solution. Local government institutions that are democratically elected
and have real authority over resources may be in some cases a better option. There isa tendency to shift responsibilities back and forth between “traditional” authorities andlocal government bodies, without giving any of them real decision-making powers. (R14)I

Certiﬁcation programs

Certiﬁcation programs are a promising response, but many communities do not haveaccess to these programs or are not aware of their existence. In addition, the ﬁnancial costs
involved reduce the chances for local communities to participate independently. (R14)I S GIGN
B

Fair trade

Fair trade is a movement initiated to help disadvantaged or politically marginalized
communities by paying better prices and providing better trading conditions, along withraising consumers’ awareness of their potential role as buyers. Fair trade overlaps insome cases with initiatives focusing on the environmental performance of trade. (R14)E S GIGN
GLNGOC

Ecotourism andcultural tourism

Ecotourism can provide economic alternatives to converting ecosystems,
however it can generate conﬂicts in resource use and the aesthetics of certain
ecosystems. Different ecosystems are subjected to different types and scales ofimpact from tourism infrastructure. Furthermore, some ecosystems are easier tomarket to tourists than others. The market value of ecosystems may vary according to
public perceptions of nature. Freezing of landscapes, conversion of landscapes,
dispossession, and removing of human inﬂuences may result, depending on viewsof what ecotourism should represent. Yet when conservation receives no budgetarysubsidy, tourism can provide revenues for conservation. (R14)E

130 Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s

GI
GN
GL

GN
GL
C

GL
B
C

NotesRequired Actors

Type of Response

Problematic

PromisingResponse

Effective

EffectivenessIntegrated responses
International
environmental
governance

Environmental policy integration at the international level is almost exclusively dependent I E K GI
T B GNon governments’ commitment to binding compromises on given issues. Major
challenges include reform of the international environmental governance structure andcoherence between international trade and environment mechanisms. (R15)

National action plans
and strategies aiming tointegrate environmental
issues into national
policies

Examples include National Conservation Strategies, National Environmental Action
Plans, and National Strategies for Sustainable Development. Success depends on
enabling conditions such as ownership by governments and civil society and broad
participation, both across sectors within the government and with the private sector aswell as at sub-national and local scales. National integrated responses may be a goodstarting point for cross-departmental linkages in governments. (R15)I E K GNT B GL
B
NGO
C

Sub-national and local
integrated approaches

Many integrated responses are implemented at the sub-national level, and examples
include sustainable forest management, integrated coastal zone management,
integrated conservation and development programs, and integrated river basin
management. Results so far have been varied, and a major constraint experienced bysub-national and multiscale responses is the lack of implementation capacity. (R15)I E K GNT B GLNGO
C

Climate change
U.N. Framework
Convention on Climate
Change and Kyoto
ProtocolThe ultimate goal of UNFCCC is stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in theatmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference withthe climate system. The Kyoto Protocol contains binding limits on greenhouse gas
emissions on industrial countries that agreed to reduce their emissions by an averageof about 5% between 2008 and 2012 relative to the levels emitted in 1990. (R13)

I

GI
GN

Reductions in net
greenhouse gas
emissions

Signiﬁcant reductions in net greenhouse gas emissions are technically feasible, in manycases at little or no cost to society. (R13)

T

GN
B
C

Land use and land
cover change

Afforestation, reforestation, improved management of forests, croplands, and rangelands, and agroforestry provide opportunities to increase carbon uptake, and slowing
deforestation reduces emissions. (R13)

T

GN
GL
B
NGO
C

Market mechanisms
and incentives

The Kyoto Protocol mechanisms, in combination with national and regional ones, canreduce the costs of mitigation for industrial countries. In addition, countries can reduce
net costs of emissions abatement by taxing emissions (or auctioning permits) and using
the revenues to cut distortion taxes on labor and capital. In the near term, projectbased trading can facilitate the transfer of climate-friendly technologies to developing
countries. (R13)

E

GI
GN
B

Adaptation

Some climate change is inevitable, and ecosystems and human societies will needto adapt to new conditions. Human populations will face the risk of damage fromclimate change, some of which may be countered with current coping systems; others
may need radically new behaviors. Climate change needs to be factored into current
development plans. (R13)

I

GN
GL
NGO
C
R

Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s 131

Appendix c

Authors, Coordinators, and Review Editors
Core Writing Team
Walter V. Reid, Millennium Ecosystem

Assessment, Malaysia and United States
Harold A. Mooney, Stanford University,
United States
Angela Cropper, The Cropper
Foundation, Trinidad and Tobago
Doris Capistrano, Center for International Forestry Research, Indonesia
Stephen R. Carpenter, Universityof Wisconsin - Madison, United States
Kanchan Chopra, Institute of
Economic Growth, India
Partha Dasgupta, University ofCambridge, United Kingdom
Thomas Dietz, Michigan State
University, United States
Anantha Kumar Duraiappah,
International Institute for Sustainable
Development, Canada
Rashid Hassan, University of
Pretoria, South Africa
Roger Kasperson, Clark University,
United States
Rik Leemans, Wageningen University,
Netherlands
Robert M. May, University of Oxford,
United Kingdom
Tony (A.J.) McMichael, Australian
National University, Australia
Prabhu Pingali, Food and Agriculture
Organization of the United Nations, Italy
Cristián Samper, National Museum of
Natural History, United States
Robert Scholes, Council for Science andIndustrial Research, South Africa
Robert T. Watson, The World Bank,
United States
A.H. Zakri, United Nations University,
Japan
Zhao Shidong, Chinese Academy of
Sciences, China
Neville J. Ash, UNEP-World Conservation
Monitoring Centre, United Kingdom
Elena Bennett, University of Wisconsin- Madison, United States
Pushpam Kumar, Institute of Economic
Growth, India
Marcus Lee, WorldFish Center, Malaysia
Ciara Raudsepp-Hearne, Millennium
Ecosystem Assessment, Malaysia

132 Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i sHenk Simons, National Institute of Public
Health and the Environment, Netherlands
Jillian Thonell, UNEP-World Conservation Monitoring Centre, United Kingdom
Monika B. Zurek, Food and Agriculture
Organization of the United Nations, Italy
Millennium Ecosystem Assessment
Coordinating Lead Authors,
Conceptual Framework Lead
Authors, and Sub-global
Assessment Coordinators
Adel Farid Abdel-Kader, United Nations
Environment Programme, Bahrain
Nimbe Adedipe, National Universities
Commission, Nigeria
Zafar Adeel, United Nations University International Network on Water,
Environment and Health, Canada
John B.R. Agard, University of the West
Indies, Trinidad and Tobago
Tundi Agardy, Sound Seas, United States
Heidi Albers, Oregon State University,
United States
Joseph Alcamo, University ofKassel, Germany
Jacqueline Alder, University Of British
Columbia, Canada
Mourad Amil, Ministere de l’Amenagement
du Territoire, de l’Eau et de l’Environnement,
MoroccoAlejandro Argumedo, Asociacion
Kechua-Aymara ANDES, Peru
Dolors Armenteras, Instituto deInvestigacion de Recursos Biológicos
Alexander von Humboldt, Colombia
Neville J. Ash, UNEP-World Conservation
Monitoring Centre, United Kingdom
Bruce Aylward, Deschutes Resources
Conservancy, United States
Suresh Chandra Babu, International Food
Policy Research Institute, India
Jayanta Bandyopadhyay, Indian Instituteof Management, India
Charles Victor Barber, IUCN –World Conservation Union, United States
Stephen Bass, Department for International
Development, United Kingdom
Allan Batchelor, B&M Environmental
Services (Pty) Ltd, South Africa
T. Douglas Beard, Jr., United States
Geological Survey, United States
Andrew Beattie, Macquarie University,
Australia

Juan Carlos Belausteguigoitia, Global
International Waters Assessment, Sweden
Elena Bennett, University of
Wisconsin - Madison, United States
D.K. Bhattacharya, University ofDelhi, India
Hernán Blanco, Recursos e Investigaciónpara el Desarrollo Sustentable, Chile
Jorge E. Botero, Centro Nacionalde Investigaciones de Café, Colombia
Lelys Bravo de Guenni, Universidad
Simón Bolívar, Venezuela
Eduardo Brondizio, Indiana University,
United States
Victor Brovkin, Potsdam Institute for
Climate Impact Research, Germany
Katrina Brown, University of East Anglia,
United Kingdom
Colin D. Butler, Australian National
University, Australia
J. Baird Callicott, University ofNorth Texas, United States
Esther Camac-Ramirez, Association
Ixä Ca Vaá for Indigenious Development
and Information, Costa Rica
Diarmid Campbell-Lendrum,
World Health Oganization, Switzerland
Doris Capistrano, Center for International Forestry Research, Indonesia
Fabricio William Carbonell Torres,
Association Ixä Ca Vaá for Indigenious Development and Information, Costa Rica
Stephen R. Carpenter, University of
Wisconsin - Madison, United States
Kenneth G. Cassman, University of
Nebraska - Lincoln, United States
Juan Carlos Castilla, Center for
Advance Studies in Ecology andBiodiversity, Chile
Robert Chambers, Institute of Development Studies - Sussex, United Kingdom
W. Bradnee Chambers, United Nations
University, Japan
F. Stuart Chapin, III, University of Alaska- Fairbanks, United States
Kanchan Chopra, Institute of Economic
Growth, India
Flavio Comim, University of Cambridge,
United Kingdom and Federal University of
Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil
Ulisses E.C. Confalonieri, National
School of Public Health, Brazil
Steve Cork, Land and Water Australia,
Australia

Carlos Corvalan, World HealthOrganization, Switzerland
Wolfgang Cramer, Potsdam Institutefor Climate Impact Research, Germany
Angela Cropper, The Cropper
Foundation, Trinidad and Tobago
Graeme Cumming, University of Florida,
United States
Owen Cylke, World Wildlife Fund,
United States
Rebecca D’Cruz, Aonyx Environmental,
Malaysia
Gretchen C. Daily, Stanford University,
United States
Partha Dasgupta, University ofCambridge, United Kingdom
Rudolf S. de Groot, Wageningen
University, Netherlands
Ruth S. DeFries, University of Maryland,
United States
Sandra Diaz, Universidad Nacionalde Córdoba, Argentina
Thomas Dietz, Michigan State University,
United States
Richard Dugdale, San Francisco State
University, United States
Anantha Kumar Duraiappah,
International Institute for Sustainable
Development, Canada
Simeon Ehui, The World Bank,
United States
Polly Ericksen, Columbia University
Earth Institute, United States
Christo Fabricius, Rhodes University,
South Africa
Dan Faith, Australian Museum, Australia
Joseph Fargione, University of New
Mexico, United States
Colin Filer, Australian National University,
Australia
C. Max Finlayson, Environmental
Research Institute of the Supervising
Scientist, Australia
Dana R. Fisher, Columbia University,
United States
Carl Folke, Stockholm University, Sweden
Miguel Fortes, Intergovernmental
Oceanographic Commission Regional
Secretariat for the Western Paciﬁc, Thailand
Madhav Gadgil, Indian Institute of
Science, India
Habiba Gitay, Australian National
University, Australia
Yogesh Gokhale, Indian Instituteof Science, India

Thomas Hahn, Stockholm University,

SwedenSimon Hales, Wellington School of
Medicine & Health Sciences, New Zealand
Kirk Hamilton, The World Bank, UnitedStatesRashid Hassan, University of Pretoria,
South Africa
He Daming, Yunnan University, China
Kenneth R. Hinga, United States Department of Agriculture, United States
Ankila J. Hiremath, Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment, India
Joanna House, Max Planck Institute for
Biogeochemistry, Germany
Robert W. Howarth, Cornell University,
United States
Tariq Ismail, Saudi Arabia
Anthony Janetos, The H. John Heinz
III Center for Science, Economics, and theEnvironment, United StatesPeter Kareiva, The Nature Conservancy,
United States
Roger Kasperson, Clark University,
United States
Kishan Khoday, United Nations
Development Programme, Indonesia
Christian Koerner, University ofBasel, Switzerland
Kasper Kok, Wageningen University,
Netherlands
Pushpam Kumar, Institute of
Economic Growth, India
Eric F. Lambin, Universite Catholiquede Louvain, Belgium
Paulo Lana, Universidade Federal
do Paraná, Brazil
Rodel D. Lasco, World Agroforestry
Centre, Philippines
Patrick Lavelle, University of Paris VI/
IRD, France
Louis Lebel, Chiang Mai University,
ThailandMarcus Lee, WorldFish Center, Malaysia
Rik Leemans, Wageningen University,
Netherlands
Christian Lévêque, Institut de Recherches
pour le développement, France
Marc Levy, Columbia University,
United States
Liu Jian, Chinese Academy of Sciences,
China
Liu Jiyuan, Chinese Academy of
Sciences, China
Ma Shiming, Chinese Academy ofAgricultural Sciences, China

Georgina Mace, Zoological Societyof London, United Kingdom
Jens Mackensen, United Nations
Environment Programme, Kenya
Mai Trong Thong, Vietnamese Academyof Science and Technology, Vietnam
Ben Malayang III, Philippine Sustainable
Development Network and University of
the Philippines Los Baños, Philippines
Jean-Paul Malingreau, Joint ResearchCentre of the European Commission, Belgium
Anatoly Mandych, Russian Academyof Sciences, Russian Federation
Peter John Marcotullio,
United Nations University, Japan
Eduardo Marone, Centro de Estudos
do Mar, Brazil
Hillary M. Masundire, Universityof Botswana, Botswana
Robert M. May, University of Oxford,
United Kingdom
James Mayers, International Institutefor Environment and Development,
United Kingdom
Alex F. McCalla, University of California- Davis, United States
Jacqueline McGlade, European
Environment Agency, Denmark
Gordon McGranahan, International
Institute for Environment and Development,
United Kingdom
Tony (A.J.) McMichael, Australian
National University, Australia
Jeffrey A. McNeely, IUCN-The World
Conservation Union, Switzerland
Monirul Q. Mirza, University of Toronto,
CanadaBedrich Moldan, Charles University,
Czech RepublicDavid Molyneux, Liverpool School of
Tropical Medicine, United Kingdom
Harold A. Mooney, Stanford University,
United States
Sanzhar Mustaﬁn, Regional Environmental Centre for Central Asia, Kazakhstan
Constancia Musvoto, University ofZimbabwe, Zimbabwe
Shahid Naeem, Columbia University,
United States
Nebojša Nakićenović, International
Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Austria
Gerald C. Nelson, University of Illinois- Urbana-Champaign, United States
Niu Wen-Yuan, Chinese Academyof Sciences, China

Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s 133

Ian Noble, The World Bank, United States
Signe Nybø, Norwegian Institute for

Nature Research, Norway
Masahiko Ohsawa, University ofTokyo, Japan
Willis Oluoch-Kosura, Universityof Nairobi, Kenya
Ouyang Zhiyun, Chinese Academyof Sciences, China
Stefano Pagiola, The World Bank,
United States
Cheryl A. Palm, Columbia University,
United States
Jyoti K. Parikh, Integrated Researchand Action for Development, India
Anand Patwardhan, Indian Instituteof Technology-Bombay, India
Ankur Patwardhan, Research & Actionin Natural Wealth Administration, India
Jonathan Patz, University of Wisconsin- Madison, United States
Daniel Pauly, University of British
Columbia, Canada
Steve Percy, United States
Henrique Miguel Pereira, Universityof Lisbon, Portugal
Reidar Persson, Swedish University ofAgricultural Sciences, Sweden
Garry D. Peterson, McGill University,
CanadaGerhard Petschel-Held, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Germany
Ina Binari Pranoto, Ministry of Environment, Indonesia
Robert Prescott-Allen, Coast
Information Team, Canada
Rudy Rabbinge, Wageningen University,
Netherlands
Kilaparti Ramakrishna, Woods Hole
Research Center, United States
P. S. Ramakrishnan, Jawaharlal Nehru
University, India
Paul Raskin, Tellus Institute, United States
Ciara Raudsepp-Hearne, Millennium
Ecosystem Assessment, Malaysia
Walter V. Reid, Millennium Ecosystem
Assessment, Malaysia and United States
Carmen Revenga, The Nature
Conservancy, United States
Belinda Reyers, Council for Scienceand Industrial Research, South Africa

134 Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i sTaylor H. Ricketts, World Wildlife
Fund, United States
Janet Riley, Rothamsted Research,
United Kingdom
Claudia Ringler, International Food
Policy Research Institute, United States
Jon Paul Rodriguez, Instituto Venezolanode Investigaciones, United States
Jeffrey M. Romm, University of California
Berkeley, United States
Sergio Rosendo, University of East Anglia,
United Kingdom
Uriel N. Safriel, Hebrew University ofJerusalem, Israel
Osvaldo E. Sala, Brown University,
United States
Cristián Samper, National Museum of
Natural History, United States
Neil Sampson, The Sampson Group, Inc.,
United States
Robert Scholes, Council for Science andIndustrial Research, South Africa
Mahendra Shah, International Institutefor Applied System Analysis, Austria
Alexander Shestakov, World Wildlife
Fund Russian Programme, Russian Federation
Anatoly Shvidenko, Institute forApplied Systems Analysis, Austria
Henk Simons, National Institute of Public
Health and the Environment, Netherlands
David Simpson, United States Environmental Protection Agency, United States
Nigel Sizer, The Nature Conservancy,
Indonesia
Marja Spierenburg, Vrije Universiteit
Amsterdam, Netherlands
Bibhab Talukdar, Ashoka Trustfor Research in Ecology and theEnvironment, India
Mohamed Tawﬁc Ahmed, Suez Canal
University, Egypt
Pongmanee Thongbai, Thailand
Institute of Scientiﬁc and TechnologicalResearch, Thailand
David Tilman, University of Minnesota,
United States
Thomas P. Tomich, World Agroforestry
Centre, Kenya
Ferenc L. Toth, International Atomic
Energy Agency, Austria
Jane K. Turpie, University of Cape Town,
South Africa
Albert S. van Jaarsveld, Stellenbosch
University, South Africa

Detlef van Vuuren, National Institutefor Public Health and the Environment,
Netherlands
Joeli Veitayaki, University of theSouth Paciﬁc, Fiji
Sandra J. Velarde, World Agroforestry
Centre, Kenya
Rodrigo A. Braga Moraes Victor,
São Paulo City Green Belt Biosphere Reserve- Forest Institute, Brazil
Ernesto F. Viglizzo, National Institute for
Agricultural Technology, Argentina
Bhaskar Vira, University of Cambridge,
United Kingdom
Charles J. Vörösmarty, University of
New Hampshire, United States
Diana Harrison Wall, Colorado State
University, United States
Merrilyn Wasson, Australian National
University, Australia
Masataka Watanabe, National Institutefor Environmental Studies, Japan
Robert T. Watson, The World Bank,
United States
Thomas J. Wilbanks, Oak Ridge
National Laboratory, United States
Meryl Williams, Consultative Group on
International Agricultural Research, Malaysia
Poh Poh Wong, National University ofSingapore, Singapore
Stanley Wood, International Food Policy
Research Institute, United States
Ellen Woodley, Terralingua, Canada
Alistair Woodward, University of
Auckland, New ZealandAnastasios Xepapadeas, Universityof Crete, Greece
Gary Yohe, Wesleyan University,
United States
Yue Tianxiang, Chinese Academyof Sciences, China
Maria Fernanda Zermoglio, Universityof California - Davis, United States
Zhao Shidong, Chinese Academy of
Sciences, China
Monika B. Zurek, Food and Agriculture
Organization of the United Nations, Italy

Millennium Ecosystem Assessment
Board of Review Editors
Co-chairs
José Sarukhán, Universidad Nacional

Autónoma de México, Mexico
Anne Whyte, Mestor Associates Ltd.,
CanadaBoard Members
Antonio Alonso Concheiro, Analítica

Consultores Asociados, Mexico
Joseph Baker, Queensland Department ofPrimary Industries and Fisheries, Australia
Arsenio Balisacan, Southeast AsianRegional Center for Graduate Study andResearch in Agriculture, Philippines
Fikret Berkes, University of Manitoba,
CanadaJulia Carabias, Universidad Nacional
Autónoma de México, Mexico
Gerardo Ceballos, Universidad Nacional
Autónoma de México, Mexico
Robert Costanza, University of Vermont,
United States
Marian S. de los Angeles, The World
Bank, United States
Navroz K. Dubash, National Institute of
Public Finance and Policy, India
Faye Duchin, Rensselaer Polytechnic
Institute, United States
Jeremy S. Eades, Ritsumeikan Asia Paciﬁc
University, Japan
Mohamed A. El-Kassas, Universityof Cairo, Egypt
Paul R. Epstein, Harvard Medical
School, United States
Jorge D. Etchevers, Colegio dePostgraduados, Mexico
Exequiel Ezcurra, Instituto Nacionalde Ecología, Mexico
Naser I. Faruqui, Environment
Canada, Canada
Christopher Field, Carnegie Instituteof Washington, United States
Blair Fitzharris, University of Otago,
New Zealand
Gilberto Gallopin, Economic Commission for Latin America and Caribbean, Chile
Peter Gardiner, Independent consultant,
Malaysia
Mario Giampietro, Istituto Nazionale di
Ricerca per gli Alimenti e la Nutrizione, Italy
Andrew Githeko, Kenya Medical ResearchInstitute, Kenya

Allen Hammond, World Resources
Institute, United States
Marc J. Hershman, University ofWashington, United States
Brian John Huntley, National BotanicalInstitute, South Africa
Pedro R. Jacobi, Universidade de São
Paulo, Brazil
Pavel Kabat, Wageningen University,
Netherlands
Roger Kasperson, Clark University,
United States
Robert W. Kates, Independent Scholar,
United States
Tony La Viña, World Resources Institute,
Philippines
Sarah Laird, Independent Scholar, UnitedStatesSandra Lavorel, Université Joseph Fourier,FranceNeil A. Leary, International Global Change
System for Analysis Research and Training
Secretariat, United States
Kai Lee, Williams College, United States
Ariel E. Lugo, United States Departementof Agriculture - Forest Service, Puerto Rico
Yuzuru Matsuoka, Kyoto University, Japan
Richard Moles, University of Limerick,Ireland
Fran Monks, United States
Patricia Moreno Casasola, Institute for
Ecology, Mexico
Mohan Munasinghe, Munasinghe
Institute for Development, Sri Lanka
Gerald C. Nelson, University of Illinois- Urbana-Champaign, United States
Valery M. Neronov, Russian Committee
for UNESCO Man and Biosphere Programme, Russian Federation
Shuzo Nishioka, National Institutefor Environmental Studies, Japan
Richard B. Norgaard, Universityof California - Berkeley, United States
Bernadette O’Regan, Universityof Limerick, Ireland
León Olivé, Universidad Nacional
Autónoma de México, Mexico
Gordon Orians, University ofWashington, United States
Stephen Pacala, Princeton University,
United States
Christine Padoch, New York Botanical
Garden, United States
Jan Plesnik, Agency for Nature
Conservation and Landscape Protection,
Czech Republic

Ravi Prabhu, Center for International
Forestry Research, Zimbabwe
Jorge Rabinovich, National Universityof La Plata, Argentina
Victor Ramos, Philippines
David J. Rapport, The University ofWestern Ontario, Canada
Robin S. Reid, International LivestockResearch Institute, Kenya
Ortwin Renn, University of
Stuttgart, Germany
Frank Rijsberman, International
Water Management Institute, Sri Lanka
Agnes C. Rola, University of thePhilippines Los Banos, Philippines
Jeffrey M. Romm, University of California
Berkeley, United States
Cherla B. Sastry, University of Toronto,
CanadaMarten Scheffer, Wageningen University,
Netherlands
Kedar Lal Shrestha, Institute forDevelopment and Innovation, Nepal
Bach Tan Sinh, National Institute for
Science and Technology Policy and Strategy
Studies, Vietnam
Otton Solis, Costa Rica
Avelino Suárez Rodríguez, Cuban
Environmental Agency, Cuba
Jatna Supriatna, University of Indonesia,
Indonesia
DanLing Tang, Fudan University, China
Holm Tiessen, Goettingen University,
Germany
Hebe M.C. Vessuri, Venezuelan Instituteof Scientiﬁc Research, Venezuela
Angela de L. Rebello Wagener,
Pontiﬁcia Universidade Catolica do Rio
de Janeiro, Brazil
Wang Rusong, Chinese Academy of
Sciences, China
Wolfgang Weimer-Jehle, Universityof Stuttgart, Germany
Philip Weinstein, University of Western
Australia, Australia
Thomas J. Wilbanks, Oak Ridge National
Laboratory, United States
Xu Jianchu, International Center for
Integrated Mountain Development, Nepal
Michael D. Young, Commonwealth
Scientiﬁc and Industrial Research
Organization, Australia
Linxiu Zhang, Chinese Academy of
Sciences, China

Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s 135

Appendix D

Abbreviations, Acronyms, and Figure Sources
Abbreviations and Acronyms

Figure Sources

BSE – bovine spongiform encephalopathy
CBD – Convention on Biological Diversity
DALY – disability-adjusted life year
FAO – Food and Agriculture Organization(United Nations)
GDP – gross domestic product
GHS – greenhouse gases
GNI – gross national income
GNP – gross national product
IPCC – Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change
IUCN – World Conservation Union
IVM – integrated vector management
MA – Millennium Ecosystem Assessment
MEA – multilateral environmental agreement
MDG – Millennium Development Goal
NGO – nongovernmental organization
NPP – net primary productivity
NWFP – non-wood forest productOECD – Organisation for Economic
Co-operation and Development
PA – protected area
RBO – river basin organization
SARS – severe acute respiratory syndrome
SCOPE – Scientiﬁc Committee on Problemsof the Environment
UNCCD – United Nations Convention to
Combat Desertiﬁcation
UNEP – United Nations Environment
Programme
UNFCCC – United Nations Framework
Convention on Climate Change
WWF – World Wide Fund for Nature

Most Figures used in this report were redrawn
from Figures included in the technical assessment reports in the chapters referenced in the
Figure captions. Preparation of several Figuresinvolved additional information as follows:

Chemical Symbols, Compounds,
Units of Measurement
CH4 – methane
CO – carbon monoxide
CO2 – carbon dioxide
GtC-eq – gigatons of carbon equivalent
N – nitrogen
N2O – nitrous oxide
NOx – nitrogen oxides
ppmv – parts per million by volume
SO2 – sulfur dioxideteragram – 1012 grams

136 Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i sFigure 11 (and Figure 3.4)

The source Figure from CF Box 2.4 was
updated to 2003/04 with data from Northern Cod (2J+3KL) Stock Status Update,Fisheries and Oceans Canada, March 2004.
Figure 14 (and Figure 1.5)

The source Figure (R9 Fig 9.1) was modiﬁed to include the addition of projected
human inputs in 2050 based on data included in the original source for R9 Fig 9.1:
Galloway, J.P., et al., 2004, Biogeochemistry70: 153–226.
Figure 1.6

The source Figure (R9 Fig 9.2) was modiﬁed to include two additional deposition
maps for 1860 and 2050 that had been
included in the original source for
R9 Fig 9.2: Galloway, J.P., et al., 2004,
Biogeochemistry 70: 153–226.
Figure 1.7

This Figure was developed from two Figures
included in articles cited in C11.3.1: Ruizet al., 2000, Annual Review of Ecology and
Systematics 31: 481-531 (Fig 1c); Ribera Siguan 2003, in G.M. Ruiz and J.T. Carlton
eds., Invasive Species: Vectors and Management Strategies, Island Press, Washington
D.C. (Fig 8.5).
Figures B and C in Box 3.1 - Linkages between
Ecosystem Services and Human Well-being

The source Figures (C7 Fig 7.13 and 7.14)
are based on World Health Organizationand United Nations Children’s Fund, 2000:
Global Water Supply and Sanitation Assessment 2000 Report, World Health Organization, Geneva, updated for 2002 using the
WHO online database.

Figure 3.1

This Figure was developed from thedatabase cited in C5.2.6 using World Bankﬁgures for “adjusted net savings” for 2001,
downloaded from lnweb18.worldbank.org/
ESSD/envext.nsf/44ByDocName/Green
AccountingAdjustedNetSavings on January
25, 2005.
Figure 3.6

The source Figure (S7 Fig 7.3) is based on
Figure 3-9 in Intergovernmental Panel for
Climate Change, 2000: Special Report on
Emissions Scenarios, Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge, U.K.
Figures 4.1 and 4.2

The source Figures (S7 Figs 7.6a and 7.6b)
are based on data downloaded from theonline World Bank database and reported
in World Bank, 2004: World Development
Report 2004: Making Services Work for Poor
People, World Bank, Washington D.C.
Figure 8.1

The source Figure (C5 Box 5.2) is redrawn
from Figure 7 in World Bank, 2004: Stateand Trends of the Carbon Market - 2004.
World Bank, Washington D.C.

Appendix E

Assessment Report Tables of Contents
Note that text references to CF, CWG, SWG, RWG, or SGWG refer to the entire working group report. ES refers to the Main Messages in a chapter.

Ecosystems and Human Well-being:
A Framework for Assessment
CF.1
CF.2
CF.3
CF.4
CF.5
CF.6
CF.7
CF.8

Introduction and Conceptual
Framework
Ecosystems and Their Services
Ecosystems and Human Well-being
Drivers of Change in Ecosystems
and Their Services
Dealing with Scale
Concepts of Ecosystem Value andValuation Approaches
Analytical Approaches
Strategic Interventions, Response
Options, and Decision-making

Current State and Trends:
Findings of the Condition and
Trends Working Group
SDM
C.01
C.02
C.03
C.04
C.05
C.06
C.07
C.08
C.09
C.10
C.11
C.12
C.13
C.14
C.15
C.16
C.17
C.18
C.19
C.20

Summary
MA Conceptual Framework
Analytical Approaches for Assessing
Ecosystem Conditions andHuman Well-being
Drivers of Change (note: this is asynopsis of Scenarios Chapter 7)
Biodiversity
Ecosystem Conditions andHuman Well-being
Vulnerable Peoples and Places
Fresh Water
Food
Timber, Fuel, and Fiber
New Products and Industries
from Biodiversity
Biological Regulation of
Ecosystem Services
Nutrient Cycling
Climate and Air Quality
Human Health: Ecosystem
Regulation of Infectious Diseases
Waste Processing and Detoxiﬁcation
Regulation of Natural Hazards:
Floods and Fires
Cultural and Amenity Services
Marine Fisheries Systems
Coastal Systems
Inland Water Systems

C.21
C.22
C.23
C.24
C.25
C.26
C.27
C.28

Forest and Woodland Systems
Dryland Systems
Island Systems
Mountain Systems
Polar Systems
Cultivated Systems
Urban Systems
Synthesis

R.10
R.11
R.12
R.13
R.14
R.15
R.16

Scenarios: Findings of the
Scenarios Working Group

R.17

SDM
S.01
S.02

R.18
R.19

S.03
S.04
S.05
S.06
S.07
S.08
S.09
S.10
S.11
S.12
S.13
S.14

Summary
MA Conceptual Framework
Global Scenarios in Historical
Perspective
Ecology in Global Scenarios
State of Art in Simulating Future
Changes in Ecosystem Services
Scenarios for Ecosystem Services:
Rationale and Overview
Methodology for Developing the
MA Scenarios
Drivers of Change in Ecosystem
Condition and Services
Four Scenarios
Changes in Ecosystem Services
and Their Drivers across the
Scenarios
Biodiversity across Scenarios
Human Well-being across Scenarios
Interactions among Ecosystem
Services
Lessons Learned for Scenario Analysis
Policy Synthesis for Key Stakeholders

Policy Responses: Findings of the
Responses Working Group
SDM
R.01
R.02
R.03
R.04
R.05
R.06
R.07
R.08
R.09

Summary
MA Conceptual Framework
Typology of Responses
Assessing Responses
Recognizing Uncertainties in
Evaluating Responses
Biodiversity
Food and Ecosystems
Freshwater Ecosystem Services
Wood, Fuelwood, and
Non-wood Forest Products
Nutrient Management

Waste Management, Processing,and Detoxiﬁcation
Flood and Storm Control
Ecosystems and Vector-borne
Disease Control
Climate Change
Cultural Services
Integrated Responses
Consequences and Optionsfor Human HealthConsequences of Responses on
Human Well-being and Poverty
Reduction
Choosing Responses
Implications for Achieving theMillennium Development Goals

Multiscale Assessments:
Findings of the Sub-global
Assessments Working GroupSDM Summary
SG.01 MA Conceptual Framework
SG.02 Overview of the MA Sub-global
Assessments
SG.03 Linking Ecosystem Services
and Human Well-being
SG.04 The Multiscale Approach
SG.05 Using Multiple Knowledge Systems:
Beneﬁts and Challenges
SG.06 Assessment Process
SG.07 Drivers of Ecosystem Change
SG.08 Condition and Trends of Ecosystem
Services and Biodiversity
SG.09 Responses to Ecosystem Change
and their Impacts on Human
Well-being
SG.10 Sub-global Scenarios
SG.11 Communities, Ecosystems,and Livelihoods
SG.12 Reﬂections and Lessons Learned

Ecosystems and Human Well-being: S y n t h e s i s 137

Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Board
The MA Board represents the users of the ﬁndings of the MA process.
Co-chairs

Robert T. Watson, Chief

Scientist, The World Bank
A.H. Zakri, Director, Instituteof Advanced Studies, United
Nations University

Millennium Ecosystem
Assessment Panel
Harold A. Mooney (co-chair),
Stanford University, United States
Angela Cropper (co-chair),
The Cropper Foundation, Trinidad
and Tobago
Doris Capistrano, Center for International Forestry Research, Indonesia
Stephen R. Carpenter, Universityof Wisconsin-Madison, United States
Kanchan Chopra, Institute of
Economic Growth, India
Partha Dasgupta, University ofCambridge, United Kingdom
Rik Leemans, Wageningen
University, Netherlands
Robert M. May, University of
Oxford, United Kingdom
Prabhu Pingali, Food andAgriculture Organization of theUnited Nations, Italy
Rashid Hassan, University of
Pretoria, South Africa
Cristián Samper, Smithsonian
National Museum of Natural History,
United States
Robert Scholes, Council for
Scientiﬁc and Industrial Research,
South Africa
Robert T. Watson, The World
Bank, United States (ex ofﬁcio)
A. H. Zakri, United Nations
University, Japan (ex ofﬁcio)
Zhao Shidong, Chinese Academyof Sciences, China
Editorial Board Chairs
José Sarukhán, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico
Anne Whyte, Mestor Associates
Ltd., Canada
MA Director

Walter V. Reid, Millennium
Ecosystem Assessment, Malaysia
and United States

Institutional
Representatives
Salvatore Arico, Programme
Ofﬁcer, Division of Ecologicaland Earth Sciences, United
Nations Educational, Scientiﬁcand Cultural Organization
Peter Bridgewater, Secretary
General, Ramsar Convention on
Wetlands
Hama Arba Diallo,
Executive Secretary, United
Nations Convention to
Combat Desertiﬁcation
Adel El-Beltagy, Director
General, International Center
for Agricultural Research in
Dry Areas, Consultative Groupon International Agricultural
Research
Max Finlayson, Chair, Scientiﬁc and Technical Review Panel,Ramsar Convention on Wetlands
Colin Galbraith, Chair,
Scientiﬁc Council, Convention
on Migratory Species
Erika Harms, Senior Program
Ofﬁcer for Biodiversity, United
Nations Foundation
Robert Hepworth, Acting
Executive Secretary, Convention
on Migratory Species
Olav Kjørven, Director,
Energy and Environment Group,
United Nations Development
Programme
Kerstin Leitner, Assistant
Director-General, Sustainable
Development and Healthy
Environments, World HealthOrganization
Alfred Oteng-Yeboah,
Chair, Subsidiary Body on
Scientiﬁc, Technical and Technological Advice, Convention
on Biological Diversity
Christian Prip, Chair,
Subsidiary Body on Scientiﬁc,
Technical and Technological
Advice, Convention on
Biological Diversity
Mario A. Ramos, Biodiversity
Program Manager, Global
Environment Facility

Thomas Rosswall, Executive
Director, International Council
for Science - ICSU
Achim Steiner, Director
General, IUCN - The World
Conservation Union
Halldor Thorgeirsson,
Coordinator, United Nations
Framework Convention on
Climate Change
Klaus Töpfer, Executive
Director, United Nations
Environment Programme
Jeff Tschirley, Chief,
Environmental and Natural
Resources Service, Research,
Extension and Training Division,
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
Riccardo Valentini, Chair,Committee on Science andTechnology, United Nations
Convention to Combat
Desertiﬁcation
Hamdallah Zedan,
Executive Secretary, Convention
on Biological Diversity
At-large Members

Fernando Almeida, Executive
President, Business Council for
Sustainable Development-Brazil
Phoebe Barnard, Global
Invasive Species Programme,
South Africa
Gordana Beltram,
Undersecretary, Ministry of
the Environment and Spatial
Planning, Slovenia
Delmar Blasco, Former
Secretary General, Ramsar
Convention on Wetlands, Spain
Antony Burgmans,
Chairman, Unilever N.V.,
Netherlands
Esther Camac-Ramirez,
Asociación Ixä Ca Vaá de
Desarrollo e Información
Indigena, Costa Rica
Angela Cropper (ex ofﬁcio),
President, The Cropper Foundation, Trinidad and Tobago
Partha Dasgupta, Professor,
Faculty of Economics andPolitics, University ofCambridge, United Kingdom
José María Figueres,
Fundación Costa Rica para el
Desarrollo Sostenible, Costa Rica
Fred Fortier, Indigenous
Peoples’ Biodiversity Information
Network, Canada

Mohamed H.A. Hassan,
Executive Director, Third World
Academy of Sciences for theDeveloping World, Italy
Jonathan Lash, President,
World Resources Institute,
United States
Wangari Maathai,Vice Minister for Environment,
Kenya
Paul Maro, Professor,
Department of Geography,
University of Dar es
Salaam, Tanzania
Harold A. Mooney(ex ofﬁcio), Professor,
Department of Biological
Sciences, Stanford University,
United States
Marina Motovilova, Facultyof Geography, Laboratory of
Moscow Region, Russia
M.K. Prasad, Environment
Centre of the Kerala Sastra
Sahitya Parishad, India
Walter V. Reid, Director,
Millennium Ecosystem
Assessment, Malaysia andUnited States
Henry Schacht, Past
Chairman of the Board, Lucent
Technologies, United StatesPeter Johan Schei,
Director, The Fridtjof Nansen
Institute, Norway
Ismail Serageldin, President,
Bibliotheca Alexandrina, Egypt
David Suzuki, Chair, David
Suzuki Foundation, Canada
M.S. Swaminathan,Chairman, MS Swaminathan
Research Foundation, India
José Galízia Tundisi,
President, International Instituteof Ecology, Brazil
Axel Wenblad, Vice President
Environmental Affairs, Skanska
AB, Sweden
Xu Guanhua, Minister,
Ministry of Science andTechnology, China
Muhammad Yunus,
Managing Director, Grameen
Bank, Bangladesh

Secretariat Support Organizations
The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) coordinates the Millennium Ecosystem
Assessment Secretariat, which is based at the following partner institutions:
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Italy
Institute of Economic Growth, India
International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), Mexico (until 2002)
Meridian Institute, United States
National Institute of Public Health and the Environment (RIVM), Netherlands (until mid-2004)
Scientiﬁc Committee on Problems of the Environment (SCOPE), France
UNEP-World Conservation Monitoring Centre, United Kingdom
University of Pretoria, South Africa
University of Wisconsin-Madison, United States
World Resources Institute (WRI), United States
WorldFish Center, Malaysia
Maps and graphics: Emmanuelle Bournay and Philippe Rekacewicz, UNEP/GRID-Arendal, Norway

The production of maps and graphics was made possible by the generous support of the Ministryof Foreign Affairs of Norway and UNEP/GRID-Arendal.
Photos:Front cover:■ Tran Thi Hoa, The World Bank
Back cover:■ David Woodfall/WWI/Peter Arnold, Inc.

MILLENNIUM ECOSYSTEM ASSESSMENT

Ecosystems and Human Well-being Synthesis

Ecosystems
AND HUMAN
WELL-BEING
Synthesis

ISBN 1-59726-040-1

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MILLENNIUM ECOSYSTEM ASSESSMENT