The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2001-2005). A World Saver?

By Colin Butler

The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) was called for by United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan in 2000. Conceived in the late 1990s, following the disappointing response to its predecessor,(1) the MA formally started in 2001. Its objective was to assess the consequences of past, present and future ecosystem change for human well-being and the scientific basis for actions to enhance the sustainable use of ecosystems, in order to enhance human well-being.

The MA has now almost completed this Herculean task. Its birth was announced simultaneously in 12 cities on March 30 and March 31, 2005. As one of two “co-ordinating lead authors” for the chapter “Human Well-Being across the scenarios”(2) I participated in one of these launches, in New Delhi, India.

Modeled on the multidisciplinary Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the MA is an impressive achievement. It involved more than 1,350 experts from almost 100 countries, over a four year period. Work was peer reviewed by the scientific community and also “scrutinized by governments” – more of this later. While the largest single discipline represented was ecology, many economists and other social scientists also participated. There was a sprinkling of health workers, including representation from W.H.O. Three hefty volumes (“Conditions and Trends”, “Scenarios”, and “Responses”) are to be released in late 2005, as well as several smaller Sub-Global Assessments. A series of short reports, including a Health synthesis, have also either appeared or soon will.

Like the IPCC the MA did not set out to conduct empirical research, but instead to assemble and assess existing work in many relevant disciplines

A preamble to these major reports was a book called Ecosystems and Human Well-Being, a “conceptual framework” published in 2003.(3) I was also involved in that volume, as was DEA Scientific Committee Member, Professor Tony McMichael.(4)

Main findings

The main findings of the MA will not surprise environmentalists, but they are nevertheless important because of the cumulative scientific expertise and effort they embody, not only of the many writers, but also of the larger scientific literature on which the writers drew. The full findings are freely available at the MA website (www.MAweb.org). The main findings include:

 Nearly two thirds of the ecosystem services (i.e. the provisioning, regulating and cultural benefits “provided” by ecosystems, such as food, flood control, as well as the psychological and sometimes spiritual boost that exposure to nature gives many people)(1) are in quantitative decline. Qualitatively, this decline is likely to be even steeper.
 Improvements in human well-being have been at a substantial cost to natural capital, eroding many ecosystem services, perhaps critically.
 More than two billion people in the world’s dry regions are intensely vulnerable to further loss of ecosystem services, including of water.
 Many ecosystems face a growing risk from climate change, nutrient pollution and ongoing loss of biodiversity.
 Continuing ecosystem service loss is a significant barrier to achieving the Millennium Development Goals.
 The pressures on ecosystems will increase in coming decades, though the rate of this increase can be modified.
 Measures to conserve natural resources are more likely to succeed if local communities are given more ownership and control over them.
 Today’s technology and knowledge can reduce human impact on ecosystems. But these are unlikely to be deployed fully until the full value of ecosystems is taken into account.
 Better protection of natural assets requires co-ordinated efforts across governments, businesses, and international institutions.

A key concept of the MA relates to inequality. Many people consume – indeed over-consume – ecosystem services (especially the major provisioning service of food), at the expense of distant, unseen humans. For example, considerable coastline has been transformed to grow shrimp. This has brought benefits to some people in the local shrimp-growing economy, but has been accompanied by many risks and costs, such as the loss of fish-breeding habitat and the sea-surge protection services of mangroves. Most risk from this ecological conversion is incurred by local people, rather than distant consumers. Deforestation, whether legal or illegal, in places such Kalimantan or the Amazon, enables a cheap ecosystem service to be provided to distant and wealthy consumers, such as importers of tropical timber or Brazilian soy. But any harm to the local people as a result of the local loss of other – non-marketised – ecosystem services (such as those provided by an intact forest) is unlikely to be reflected in the price paid by the soy or wood consumer. When one area becomes depleted of a marketable ecosystem-derived commodity, another source can be usually be found. Price signals to the wealthy consumer are only likely to rise sharply when almost all supply is depleted; until then most producers are likely to desperately struggle to maintain some market share, especially if they are trapped by indebtedness, or by local cartels who profit from local harm, but feel insulated, perhaps because they possess a kind of parachute which can be used to escape when needed.

Could the MA have been improved?

The MA has involved the contribution, often voluntary, of many experts. I am sure that the motivation of most if not all of these people has been to reflect current scientific opinion as accurately as possible. It therefore may seem churlish to criticise it, especially since I have been so deeply involved in it.

However, it is a conceit to consider that any endeavour, including science, can be free of values or political constraints. The very design of the MA – a multidisciplinary, multinational assessment targeted at elite decision makers and whose text was intended to be reviewed by governments – carried a high and inevitable cost. Bringers of bad news are rarely popular. A king may tolerate one truth-telling jester, but is less likely to be impressed if 1360 earnest scientists tell him he is naked. And these days it is not only the king who is unclothed. As is fairly well known (and essentially unchallenged by the MA) if all humans had the “ecological footprint” of the average Australian (which, dare I say, includes the majority of readers of this essay) then at least another three planets would be required (5). We are already living hopelessly beyond our means. Yet, affluence, population and expectations continue to rise. Well-being is context dependent: if our neighbours take overseas holidays and have three cars, we are likely, understandably, to also want these things. A kind of reverse “herd immunity” operates – only the most resistant person is likely to avoid the vortex of consumerism; even frugal recyclers in Australia are likely to exceed their sustainable ecological quota.

At the best case the findings of the MA, together with pressure from civil society (who, it is hoped, will use the MA findings and evidence to bolster their lobbying) may lead to modest policy adjustments in the near future, such as more use of hybrid cars or a slight decrease in meat consumption by the overfed. However these are unlikely to be on the revolutionary scale clearly needed if we are to achieve sustainable well-being for most of the world’s population. Far more work is necessary to drive the sustainability transition.(6,7)

The MA deliberately set out to avoid being too negative. This has biased its findings – especially the prognosis (the “scenarios”) – towards the positive. Yet, interestingly, the press has so far focussed on the negative, and the MA Board’s summary document, “Living beyond our means” suggests more pessimism than the Board may once have envisaged. Perhaps the MA Board has realised that excessive optimism has limited value. However, the pervasive pressure to avoid being “belittled” as a doomsayer,(8) together with the inevitable selection bias towards contributors with privileged pasts, presents and futures, is likely to have reduced the power and usefulness of the scenarios.

Scenarios – qualitative ideas and quantitative models of the future – are espoused as plausible, but not predictive futures. Three scenarios (“Global Orchestration”, “Adapting Mosaic” and “TechnoGarden”) were found to be, in the main, positive. Yet a major conclusion of the MA is that current policy is not realistically placing society in a position to achieve any of these three positive scenarios. This fuels concern that in fact none are at this stage truly plausible. The fourth scenario, “Order from Strength,” postulates a deeply divided and insecure world. Probably (thankfully) that future is too bleak to be fully realistic. In reality, the near future is more likely to contain dilute elements of all four scenarios.(9) But sometime this century, critical depletions of at more ecological and social systems seems certain.(10) At that point the transformation to a positive scenario may be impossible, given the collective population and resource pressure that will then apply. Conflict could then tip us into civilisation failure and a new dark age.

Would I be involved in any further round of the MA? Probably – but they may not want me!

References

1. Stokstad E. Ecosystem services. Science 2005;308:41-43.
2. Butler CD, Oluoch-Kosura W, Zurek M, Corvalan CF, Fobil J, Tancredi E, Pingali P, Koren H, Hales S. Human well-being across the scenarios. In: Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, ed. Scenarios Assessment. Washington DC: Island Press, 2005 (in press).
3. Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. Ecosystems and Human Well-being. A Framework for Assessment. Island Press, 2003.
4. Butler CD, Chambers R, Chopra K, Dasgupta P, Duraiappah A, Kumar P, McMichael AJ, N. Wen-Yuan (authors alphabetical). Ecosystems and human well-being. In: Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, ed. Ecosystems and Human Well-being. A Framework for Assessment. Washington: Island Press, 2003:71-84.
5. Wackernagel M, Rees W. Our Ecological Footprint: Reducing Human Impact on Earth. New Society Publishers, 1995.
6. Speth G. The transition to a sustainable society. Proceedings National Academy Science USA 1992;89:870-872.
7. Raskin P, Gallopin G, Gutman P, Hammond A, Kates R, Swart R. Great Transition: The Promise and Lure of the Times Ahead. Stockholm Environment Institute, 2002.
8. Anonymous. Plenty of gloom. The Economist 1997;345:19-21.
9. Butler CD. Peering into the fog: ecologic change, human affairs and the future. EcoHealth 2005 (in press);2:1-5.
10. Meadows DH, Meadows DL, Randers J. Beyond the Limits: Global Collapse or a Sustainable Future. Chelsea Green Publishing Co, 1992.