Let's explore the links

The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) is an international work program launched by U.N. Secretary- General Kofi Annan in June 2001 and was completed in March 2005 (www.millenniumassessment.org/). It was designed to meet the consequences of ecosystem change for human well-being and options for responding to those changes.

The MA is mainly an instrument to identify priorities for action! It focuses on ecosystem services (the benefits people obtain from ecosystems), how changes in ecosystem services have affected human wellbeing, how ecosystem changes may affect people in future decades, and response options that might be adopted at local, national, or global scales to improve ecosystem management and thereby contribute to human well-being and poverty alleviation.

A key step in the process is to identify the links between human societies and the environmental condition (functioning). By exploring and recognizing these relevant links we will be able to develop better strategies, actions and success measures towards a more sustainable socio-ecological system.

This is an initiative of:

Capability and Sustainability Centre

St Edmund's College, University of Cambridge

www.st-edmunds.cam.ac.uk/csc/

United Nations Environmental Programme

www.unep.org/