Status and Progress of Implementation of Millennium Ecosystem Assessment

The technical design that needs to be implemented in the MA was initiated and finalized in April 2001, with the board approving the plan in 2002.?

The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment is being assessed on different levels. It consists of global assessments relatable to the national and local reviews.?

?Implementation of the MA at the global level and its progress:

1. ?Work has been initiated on eight ‘approved’ global assessments, especially in Western China, Norway, Sweden, India, Papua, Southern Africa, and more.?
2. There is also a ‘cross-cutting’ assessment, an alternative to Slash and Burn project mentioned in the CGIAR – which is being carried out in many tropical forests across the world.?
3. Many proposed assessments have been approved over the years.?

?Who is carrying out the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment??

?Primarily, there are four expert teams / working groups.?

1. The sub-global working group: The team presents a generic method that guides to creation and implementation of multi-level assessments and helps summarise the findings from many national and sub-global evaluations concerning the local reviews. The team directly works on meeting the needs of the decision-makers. The components studied by the team help to strengthen the perspective of the global findings as a whole from a macro perspective with the use of data and models.
2. The Condition Working Group: will discuss each significant environmental service. Each service’s state, diversity, trends in market forces, the ability of habitats to offer these services, and effects of ecosystem change on their delivery will all be taken into account. Ecosystems’ present size, health, and trends will be described, along with potential trade-offs between the delivery of different services. Indicators of people’s health, ecological security, historical security, financial prosperity, and equity will all be included in the last constituent part, which will evaluate how environmental change affects human well-being.
3. The Scenarios Working Group: In terms of developing a list of factors that provide numerical studies of the impact of various credible changes in key driving influences on proximate forces, environmental services (including biodiversity), and physical well-being. The Scenarios Working Group will evaluate the findings of previous global scenario analyses concerning items/products. The group will use examples to show how changes in ecosystem services on every significant scale (from the global to the minor) are associated with human well-being.
4. Responses Working Group: The proposed model and the type of answer possibilities under professional heritage, social control, drives, and scale will be introduced to the Responses Working Group at the outset. The examination of previous and present reaction choices will then be followed by an analysis of the literature that has already been published and the MA sub-global evaluations, which will serve as the foundation for practical suggestions, tools, and guidance for the different users. Based on an assessment of the strategies and situations that are now accessible, there will then be a combination of the components for effective responses.

?Other aspects that affect the decisions in MA?

Several methods are used to involve users in the design and implementation of the MA. A draught of the requirements determined during an early evaluation of customer requirements was generally made accessible through the MA webpage in August 2001.?

?The various committees are tasked with addressing the identified user demands as feasible in their work as this document is continually updated. For the commercial sector, authorities, indigenous groups, the scientific community, and non-governmental organizations, sectoral dialogues and briefings have also been arranged. The MA engages with many environmental and sectoral assessment procedures, such as the Global Environmental Outlook (GEO), the Global International Waters Assessment (GIWA), and the Forest Resources Assessment.

The MA concentrates on two main areas:

?a) the full spectrum of ecosystem products and services, and?

?b) the connections between ecosystems and humans. The capacity of the MA to look into connections between environmental sustainability and human growth. More and more often, the most significant ecological and development issues include trade-offs between the different advantages offered by ecosystems.?

Existing sectoral evaluations must be preserved since they provide essential functions enhanced. Still, a procedure that enables decision-makers to get this more comprehensive information is required details on the trade-offs involved in various policies’ total costs and advantages management strategies. Notably, the MA does not just concentrate on the physiological characteristics but investigates the connections between the environment and human well-being, encompassing social, economic, and health factors.