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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 and managing diseases; tackling gender disparity; ensuring sustainable development; and pursuing global partnerships. For each MDG, governments have agreed to between 1 and 8 targets (a total of 15 targets) that are to be achieved by 2015. Slowing or reversing the degradation of ecosystem services will contribute significantly to the achievement of many of the MDGs.

• Poverty Eradication: ecosystem services are a dominant influence on livelihoods of most poor people. Most of the world's poorest people live in rural areas and are thus highly dependent, directly or indirectly, on the ecosystem service of food production, including agriculture, livestock, and hunting (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 or storm damage, or changes in climate regulating services that might alter regional climate. Ecosystem degradation is often one of the factors trapping people in cycles of poverty.
• Hunger Eradication (R19.2.2). Although economic 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, and it also depends on watershed services, pollination, pest regulation, and soil formation. Food production needs to increase to meet the needs of the growing human population, and at the same time the efficiency of food production (the amount produced per unit of land, water, and other inputs) needs to increase in order to reduce harm to other key ecosystem services. Ecosystem conditions, in particular climate, soil degradation, and water availability, influences progress toward this goal through its influence on crop yields as well as through impacts on the availability of wild sources of food.
• Reducing Child Mortality. Undernutrition is the underlying cause of a substantial proportion of all child deaths. Child mortality is also 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.
• Combating Disease (R19.2.7). Human health is strongly influenced by ecosystem services 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 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 (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 and fresh water and an end to the degradation of other services such as water purification, natural hazard regulation, disease regulation, climate regulation, and cultural amenities."

Source & © Millennium Ecosystem Assessment
 Synthesis Report (2005),
Chapter 3, p.60

Ecosystem Change

Box 3.1 Table. Selected Water-related Diseases.

Table 1.1. Comparative table of reporting systems as defined by the Millennium Assessment

Table 2.1. Trends in the Human Use of Ecosystem Services and Enhancement or Degradation of the Service Around the Year 2000 - Provisioning services

Table 2.1. Trends in the Human Use of Ecosystem Services and Enhancement or Degradation of the Service Around the Year 2000 - Regulating services

Table 2.1. Trends in the Human Use of Ecosystem Services and Enhancement or Degradation of the Service Around the Year 2000 - Cultural services

Table 2.1. Trends in the Human Use of Ecosystem Services and Enhancement or Degradation of the Service Around the Year 2000 - Supporting services

Table 2.2. Indicative Ecosystem Service Trade-offs.

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

Table 5.2. Outcomes of Scenarios for Ecosystem Services in 2050 Compared with 2000

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

Table 5.4. Costs and Benefits of Proactive as Contrasted with Reactive Ecosystem Management as Revealed in the MA Scenarios

Table 8.1. Applicability of Decision Support Methods and Frameworks

Marine, Coastal, and Island Systems

Urban, Dryland and Polar systems

Forest systems

Cultivated systems

Inland water and Mountain systems

Box Figure B. Proportion of Population with Improved Drinking Water Supply in 2002

Box Figure C. Proportion of population with improved sanitation coverage in 2002

Figure 1.2. Conversion of Terrestrial Biomes

Figure 1.3. Decline in Trophic Level of Fisheries Catch Since 1950

Figure 1.4. Locations reported by various studies as undergoing high rates of land cover change in the past few decades.

Figure 1.5. Global Trends in the Creation of Reactive Nitrogen on Earth by Human Activity, with Projection to 2050

Figure 1.7. Growth in Number of Marine Species Introductions.

Figure 1.8. Species Extinction Rates

Figure 3.4. Collapse of Atlantic Cod Stocks Off the East Coast of Newfoundland in 1992

Figure 3.5. Dust Cloud Off the Northwest Coast of Africa, March 6, 2004

Figure 3.6. Changes in Economic Structure for Selected Countries

Figure 3.7. Human Population Growth Rates, 1990-2000, and Per Capita GDP and Biological Productivity in 2000 in MA Ecological Systems

Figure 4.1. GDP Average Annual Growth, 1990-2003

Figure 4.2. Per capita GDP Average Annual Growth, 1990-2003

Figure 4.3. Main Direct Drivers of Change in Biodiversity and Ecosystems

Figure 5.1. MA World Population Scenarios

Figure 5.3. Number of Ecosystem Services Enhanced or Degraded by 2050 in the Four MA Scenarios

Figure 6.1. MA Sub-Global Assessments

Figure 7.1. Characteristic Time and Space Scales Related to Ecosystems and Their Services

Box 3.1. Linkages between Ecosystem Services and Human Well-being

Box 6.1 Local Adaptations of MA Conceptual Framework

Scenarios of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment

MA Scenarios - Global Orchestration

MA Scenarios - Order from Strength

MA Scenarios - TechnoGarden

MA Scenarios - Adapting Mosaic

Marine, Coastal and Island systems

Urban, Dryland and Polar systems

Forest and Cultivated systems

Inland waters and Mountain systems

MA Systems

Box 2.1: Ecosystem Services

Box 2.1: Ecosystem Services

Box 3.2. Ecosystems and the Millennium Development Goals

Box 3.1. Linkages between Ecosystem Services and Human Well-being: Basic Materials for a Good Life

Box 3.1. Linkages between Ecosystem Services and Human Well-being: Health

Box 3.1. Linkages between Ecosystem Services and Human Well-being: Good Social Relations

Box 3.1. Linkages between Ecosystem Services and Human Well-being: Security

Box 3.1. Linkages between Ecosystem Services and Human Well-being: Freedom of Choice and Action

Box 6.1 Local Adaptations of MA Conceptual Framework

Figure 1.1. Time Series of Intercepted Continental Runoff and Large Reservoir Storage, 1900-2000

Figure 1.6. Estimated Total Reactive Nitrogen Deposition from the Atmosphere

Figure 2.1. Estimated Global Marine Fish Catch, 1950-2001.

Figure 2.2. Trend in Mean Depth of Catch Since 1950.

Figure 3.1. Net National Savings Adjusted for Investments in Human Capital, Natural Resource Depletion, and Damage Caused by Pollution compared with Standard Net National Savings Measurements

Figure 3.2. Annual Flow of Benefits from Forests in Selected Countries

Figure 3.3. Economic Benefits Under Alternate Management Practices

Table 4.1. Increase in Nitrogen Fluxes in Rivers to Coastal Oceans

Figure 5.2. Comparison of Global River Nitrogen Export

Figure 5.4. Number of Undernourished Children Projected in 2050 Under MA Scenarios

Figure 5.5. Net Change in Components of Human Well-being Between 2000 and 2050 Under MA Scenarios.

Figure 8.1. Total Carbon Market Value per Year (in million dollars nominal)