MA Scenarios - Global Orchestration

The MA developed four global scenarios exploring plausible future changes in drivers, ecosystems, ecosystem services, and human well-being. These scenarios are :

"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 equal participation and provide equal access to goods and services. These policies, in combination with large investments in global public health and the improvement of education worldwide, generally succeed in promoting economic expansion and lifting many people out of poverty into an expanding global middle class. Supra national institutions in this globalized scenario are well-placed to deal with global environmental problems such as climate change and fisheries. However, the reactive approach to ecosystem management favored in this scenario makes people vulnerable to surprises arising from delayed action. While the focus is on improving human well-being of all people, environmental problems that threaten human well-being are only considered after they become apparent.

Growing economies, expansion of education, and growth of the middle class leads to demand for cleaner cities, less pollution, and a 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 services, as forests are converted into cropped area and pasture, and the services formerly provided by forests decline. The problems related to increasing food production, such as loss of wildlands, are not apparent to most people who live in urban areas. These problems therefore receive only limited attention.

Global economic expansion expropriates or degrades many of the ecosystem services poor people once depended upon for their survival. While economic growth more than compensates for these losses in some regions by increasing our ability to find substitutes for particular ecosystem services, in many other places, it does not. An increasing number of people are impacted by the loss of basic ecosystem services essential for human life. While risks seem manageable in some places, in other places there are sudden, unexpected losses as ecosystems cross thresholds and degrade irreversibly. Loss of potable water supplies, crop failures, floods, species invasions, and outbreaks of environmental pathogens increase in frequency. The expansion of abrupt, unpredictable changes in ecosystems, many with harmful effects on increasingly large numbers of people, is the key challenge facing managers of ecosystem services. "

Source & © Millennium Ecosystem Assessment
 Synthesis Report (2005),
Chapter 5, Box 5.1, pp.72-73