* United Nations Launches Extensive Study of Earth’s Ecosystems
* International Launch Planned for June
* Fundraising Update
* Designing Sub-Global Assessments
* Technical Design Workshop Planned
* New Institutional Arrangements
United Nations Launches Extensive Study of Earth’s Ecosystems
UNITED NATIONS, June 5, 2001 – Today, World Environment Day, the United Nations, scientific groups, governments, foundations, and other international agencies, launched the most extensive study of the state of the world’s ecosystems.
Called the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA), it will examine the processes that support life on earth like the world’s grasslands, forests, rivers and lakes, farmlands, and oceans. The $21 million, four-year effort will involve 1,500 of the world’s leading scientists.
“The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment will map the health of our planet, and so fill important gaps in the knowledge that we need to preserve it,” said UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in launching the study. “All of us have to share the Earth’s fragile ecosystems and precious resources, and each of us has to play a role in preserving them. If we are to go on living together on this earth, we must all be responsible for it.”
The study was launched to provide decision-makers with authoritative scientific knowledge concerning the impact of changes to the world’s ecosystems on human livelihoods and the environment. It will provide governments, the private sector, and local organizations with better information about steps that can be taken to restore the productivity of the world’s ecosystems.
Pilot studies conducted by the World Resources Institute (WRI) indicate that in many regions of the world, the capacity of ecosystems to meet human needs for food and clean water is being diminished. Also, threats to biodiversity and human health are growing, and vulnerability to environmental disasters such as floods and landslides is increasing.
“All countries depend on ecosystem services to sustain their populations,” said Mohamed T. El-Ashry, chief executive officer of the Global Environment Facility (GEF), a primary funder of the project. “When these services are damaged, it can have wide-ranging repercussions on the development prospects of affected nations, with the most serious impacts on the poor. The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment will be a powerful tool in helping us mitigate and even reverse negative environmental trends and will strengthen our ability to foster truly sustainable development.”
The MA was designed over the past three years by the UN Development Programme, UN Environment Programme, the World Bank, the World Resources Institute, and other partners. During this period, WRI and its partners undertook a study – the Pilot Analysis of Global Ecosystems (PAGE) – to demonstrate the feasibility of the MA. The results were published in a five-volume series over the past six months.
“Ecosystems have a dual role of providing materials and services to meet human needs for food, water, employment, and health, as well as functioning to regulate environmental conditions and quality that make the Earth habitable for humans and other species,” said Angela Cropper, co-chair of the Assessment Panel of the MA. “The MA seeks to increase scientific understanding of how their capacity to do so is being affected, and to help policy-makers assess likely long-term consequences for ecosystems and societies of the decisions they make.”
The MA will include global, sub-global, and national assessments. Already, assessments are in the works for Southern Africa, Southeast Asia, Central America, Western China, and Norway. At the local level, studies are going on in India and Sweden. More sub-global assessments will be added in the next few months.
“Assessing the state of a tightly inter-woven planet requires unprecedented global cooperation,” said Timothy E. Wirth, president of the United Nations Foundation, one of the sponsors of the study. “It demands new partnerships that meld authoritative scientific expertise with the strengths of the private sector and the dedicated service of public officials.”
The MA has been recognized by governments as a mechanism to meet the assessment needs of three international environmental treaties – the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, and the UN Convention to Combat Desertification.
“The impact of the MA will stem from its scientific authority and its political legitimacy,” said Dr. Hamdallah Zedan, executive secretary of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity. “It will involve the largest number of natural and social scientists ever assembled to look at the consequences of changes to the world’s ecosystems.”
The MA’s work is overseen by a 40-member board, chaired by Dr. Robert Watson, chief scientist of the World Bank and Dr. A. H. Zakri, director of the United Nations University’s Institute of Advanced Studies. The Assessment Panel, which will oversee the technical work of the MA, is comprised of 14 of the world’s leading social and natural scientists. It is co-chaired by Ms. Cropper and Dr. Harold Mooney of Stanford University.
“We have the unprecedented ability to change the vital systems of our planet, for better or worse,” said Jonathan Lash, WRI president. “To change them for the better, we must recognize that the well-being of people and ecosystems is interwoven and that the fabric is fraying. We need to repair it, and we have the tools at hand to do so.”
International Launch Planned for June
January 3, 2001 – In December 2000, the MA Executive Committee reviewed a concept paper outlining the process for developing the MA communications and engagement strategies. Both strategies will involve a two-phased approach, with a basic set of activities to be implemented during the design year (2001) while a more comprehensive strategy is developed for the course of the assessment process. Several Board and Advisory Group members will be invited to join in the development of these strategies, along with other user groups and stakeholders.
An international “launch” of the MA is being scheduled for World Environment Day, June 5, 2001. The theme for World Environment Day will be “The Web of Life”, an excellent fit with the MA.
Work is now beginning on a Data and Information Support System that will buttress the communication, engagement, and analysis involved in the MA. This new website is one of the first components of this strategy.
Engagement of the ecosystem-related conventions continues to be a priority. A side-event on the MA was held at the December 2000 meeting of the Convention to Combat Desertification Conference Of the Parties (CCD COP) in Bonn, Germany and a statement was presented to the Committee on Science and Technology. The COP requested the CCD secretariat to continue following closely the activities of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment and to facilitate the involvement of the Parties in order that the concerns of the Parties are taken into account in the assessment. Over the course of the first year, engagement with the MA users will be closely linked to the technical design process since the design must respond to the specific needs of the users.
The Steering Committee that undertook the initial design of the MA also helped shape two related processes to help set the stage for and build support for the launch of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment:
* A “Pilot Analysis of Global Ecosystems” to demonstrate the utility of an integrated ecosystem assessment, provide a technical foundation for World Resources 2000, and assemble core data that would be used in the full Millennium Assessment;
* Preparation of World Resources 2000 – People and Ecosystems: The Fraying Web of Life, a joint publication of UNEP, UNDP, World Bank, and World Resources Institute.
Each of these activities is now in its outreach phase and helping to raise awareness regarding the importance of ecosystem goods and services and the need for the Millennium Assessment. Four of five PAGE technical reports have been released and the remaining report is in press. World Resources 2000 was launched in September 2000 at the opening of the Bergen Ministerial meeting of 35 environmental ministers, with follow-up launch activities in London, the Czech Republic, the USA, Amman Jordan, and Beijing China. A television documentary based on the report is now being produced in the United States by Bill Moyers in association with CNN, and should be available for release near the time of the MA launch.
Note: A project summary document is currently being revised, and we anticipate translations from English into Spanish and French. This version will be available on this website as soon as it is completed.
Fundraising Update
December 14, 2000 – Cash and in-kind contributions now cover more than 80% of the core budget of $21.1 million, allowing the process to formally begin in April, 2001. The GEF, UN Foundation, Packard Foundation, World Bank, UNEP, Government of Norway, Rockefeller Foundation, and NASA have made financial contributions with in-kind contributions from NASA, World Bank, UNEP, FAO, UNESCO, and UNDP. However, the remaining fundraising challenge is still significant. Until the full budget is secured, nearly one third of the funding already committed to the project (from GEF) is unavailable. Because the costs of the first (design) year will be relatively low, the process will not be significantly slowed by the absence of GEF funding during this first year. Almost all of the remaining unds needed are for the sub-global components of the Assessment.
Designing Sub-Global Assessments
November 5, 2000 – With support from the Government of Norway and Rockefeller Foundation, work has been underway since October 2000 to select and design the sub-global components of the MA process. A call for proposals was distributed widely in September 2000. The Sub-Global Assessment Working Group met on November 2-3 in Washington, DC to design a process to select and plan the sub-global assessments. The final report from that meeting is now available and will be posted on this website. The MA Board has approved the selection of Southern Africa and Southeast Asia as two of the “focal regions” for the sub-global component of the MA process. In addition, seed funding will be available to help initiate assessments in both Europe and Central America. The response to the initial call for proposals far exceeded expectations. While the MA will not be able to directly support many of the proposed assessment activities, opportunities will exist for other assessments to become partners in the MA process.
Technical Design Workshop Planned
October 14, 2000 – The MA Board invited Harold Mooney (Stanford University, USA) and Angela Cropper (Cropper Foundation, Trinidad and Tobago), to serve as the co-chairs of the Assessment Panel. The Assessment Panel, which will be comprised of the chairs of the MA Working Groups, will be the body that carries out the work of the Assessment.
The first technical design workshop for the MA is scheduled for April 8-11, 2001, hosted by the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM) in Holland. This workshop will be a preparatory meeting for the technical work of the Millennium Assessment. Participants will review the goals and approach for each of the proposed working groups and prepare preliminary draft outlines and workplans for those groups. The second technical design workshop – a larger meeting involving the core members of each of the four working groups – is tentatively scheduled for September 2001.
Plans are also being finalized for a workshop on “Remote Sensing and the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment” tentatively scheduled for October 2001 at Yale University. This will be co-sponsored by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and potentially by remote sensing agencies in other countries.
In September 2000, President Clinton stated to the Security Council at the Millennium General Assembly of the United Nations that the United States would commit support to the MA process with data from its TERRA, SeaWifs and Landsat satellites. (These data have been valued as an in-kind contribution of some $60 million.)
New Institutional Arrangements
August 1, 2000 – The Board of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment convened for the first time on July 17-18, 2000 in Trondheim, Norway, hosted by the Government of Norway. The next Board meeting will be held in Malaysia, 14-16 January 2002. The Board largely endorsed the overall MA design and conceptual framework that had been developed by the Exploratory Steering Committee over the prior 18 months. The Board emphasized in particular that the audience for the process should reach beyond governments to include the private sector and civil society. It also stressed that the MA process itself should be viewed as a means of achieving the MA’s goals, not just the products. Among other decisions, the Board:
* Selected A.H. Zakri and Robert Watson to be the Board co-chairs;
* Selected UNEP-World Conservation Monitoring Center to be the support agency for Working Group #1 (Condition);
* Agreed to undertake the activities of Working Group #2 (Scenarios) in collaboration with the SCOPE project “International Program on Ecosystem Change,” with SCOPE serving as the support agency;
* Selected WRI (in partnership with Meridian Institute) to support the Outreach-Engagement Committee;
* Decided to select support agencies for the two remaining working groups in developing countries;
* Selected five additional Board members and established a nominating committee to identify six candidates for remaining Board seats (the list of Board members is attached);
* Decided to locate the MA Director in Malaysia (the director will be based at the CGIAR Center: ICLARM);
* Established an Assessment Panel Co-chair Nominating committee.
