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Assessment a reminder of plight facing
environment
April 07, 2005, 12:15

By David Dickson and Ehsan Masood
The Millennium
Ecosystem Assessment provides a timely reminder of the plight
facing the global environment. But its scare tactics could
alienate those whose support is needed to reverse current
trends.

Ever since the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change provided the scientific trigger that led to the
Kyoto Protocol on reducing carbon emissions, other bodies have
sought to emulate its success. Organisations such as the
InterAcademy Council have used the experience to argue the
case for similar initiatives in other scientific fields where,
it is often claimed, a global scientific consensus should
almost automatically form the basis for global action. Such
has been the case with the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment.

The idea for such a report began when scientists
working for a group of international non-governmental
organisations, led by the US-based World Resources Institute,
decided that they needed to get a message across to
politicians and decisions makers - particularly
in
developing countries. The message was that dramatic
changes in policy and lifestyles are required if the current
destruction of ecosystems is to be halted, if not reversed.
The issues addressed in the assessment are obviously vital for
the future of human life on the planet. In particular, those
responsible for its
compilation point out - with
considerable justification - that a degraded ecosystem
increases the difficulty of communities escaping from the trap
of poverty; polluted drinking water increases the risk of
diseases, just as degraded soil makes food production more
difficult.

Furthermore we live in a society where
shock tactics are often required to communicate simple ideas
in a sufficiently dramatic fashion to attract the interests of
news editors and headline writers. Indeed the importance
attached to operating in this way reflects how the media has
become a prime channel for communicating information to
policymakers. The problem with the assessment is that there is
no clear scientific focus that leads directly to a policy
agenda. In the case of global warming, the scientific
community established a consensus on critical issues at the
heart of the debate, namely that man-made global warming is
occurring at a particular rate and that certain consequences
are likely unless this process is stopped.

The
assessment highlights how natural ecosystems are under
threat
The ecosystem report spreads its net more
widely. The result is a much broader picture. But it also
means that attempts to simplify the assessment's message tend
to slip into statements about human life being in peril from
an unspecific threat, perhaps best characterised as human
lifestyle. This may make for good headlines that talk of the
world being, as one newspaper put it, being "on the brink of
disaster". But it does not necessarily provide good pointers
for policymakers wanting to know what practical steps need to
be taken, and how urgently. The value of the Millennium
Ecosystem Assessment lies in the way that it highlights the
many different ways in which natural ecosystems are under
threat. The litany it recites is certainly a grim one, ranging
from warnings about the algal blooms caused by excessive use
of nitrogen fertilisers to the fact that 60% of the 'ecosystem
services' looked at in the assessment - each loosely defined
as the benefits that humankind obtains from ecosystems - are
currently being degraded or used unsustainably. Thus even
though the assessment contains no new data, it provides a
valuable synthesis of much available knowledge on species and
ecosystems that already exists.

Equally important is
the way that the report emphasises that one of the main
reasons for the widespread destruction of biodiversity is
that, in a materialistic, growth-oriented society,
biodiversity tends too often to be seen as a free resource
that is there for the taking.

Attaching a price to
environmental resources, argue environmental economists, would
immediately reduce the pressure on them (in a similar fashion
to the way that introducing a charge for cars entering the
centre of London has dramatically reduced both traffic
congestion and air pollution in the British capital). Finally,
the assessment will have done much to energise ecosystems
research in developing countries. Abdul Hamid Zakri, co-chair
of the assessment board, points out that about 30% of its 1
400 scientists are from developing countries - and that much
of the work for the report was done at the local level in
developing countries.

The problem is that the messages
in the report can become disconnected from policymaking on the
ground. Part of the reason for this strategy has been
historical. In 1995, the United Nations environment programme
with the help of conservation groups published a comprehensive
inventory of species and ecosystems. This global biodiversity
assessment was intended to inform policymaking, particularly
through the new UN biodiversity convention that had been
signed in Brazil three years earlier. But when the convention
met for its fourth annual conference in Slovakia in 1998,
delegates - most of whom came from developing countries -
rejected the assessment. There was concern among developing
countries that endorsing the global biodiversity assessment
would allow international conservation groups a voice in their
development - which they feared would mean more emphasis on
conservation and less on development. The rejection left its
authors frustrated. Soon afterwards a number of them began to
plan what would become the millennium assessment, an even more
comprehensive scientific assessment. This would seek to
include officials from all of the UN conservation-related
conventions right from the outset, and emphasise the links
between species, ecosystems and quality of life.

In
doing so, it would be more difficult for developing countries
to ignore. The result is a document that argues that the fight
against poverty will not be achieved unless ecosystem decline
is reversed. Both are guided by a belief that this
environmental sustainability is very much an orphan within the
broader developmental goals and needs its own awareness
campaign. But the impact of the assessment on policymakers and
policymaking in developing countries remains unclear. This is
no longer because of the
involvement of conservation
groups; many now play a major role in environmental protection
in developing countries.

Main report too large to be
meaningful to policymakers
It is more because of
uncertainty over how the results will relate to discussions
taking place in the context of the implementation of
individual UN treaties, such as conventions on wetlands and
biodiversity. In this
respect, there seems to be a risk
that the authors have not learned their lesson from their
failure to excite policymakers back in 1995. Some critics also
fear that the assessment may not make a significant impact
outside the scientific community as it contains too many
messages. Others complain that the main report was too
large-scale an exercise to be meaningful to national and
local-level policymakers, and has been dominated by an
excitement with data gathering rather than placing the data in
a real-world political context, which means working with
officials in governments and listening to the needs of users.

At that time, the warning that the world was using up
its natural capital was based on the finite nature of physical
resources. But the apocalyptic scenarios predicted failed to
materialise, partly as a result of new
resource finds (such
as natural gas), partly because of steps that have since been
taken to reduce the use of raw materials through a combination
of pricing and - just as important - scientific and
technological ingenuity. The warnings in the new report are
very similar to those heard 30 years ago. But this time, what
is held to be in finite supply is the ability of ecosystems to
provide socially-valuable services. What is now needed is a
set of policy measures designed to curtail ecosystem damage,
linked to appropriate scientific and technological innovations
that can chart a more environmentally-friendly way
forward.

The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment is at its
most valuable when it sets out what some of these developments
are likely to look like. The regional study of ecosystems
services in Southern Africa sloganising for a pragmatic
assessment of the links between ecosystems and human
well-being in the region.
It emphasises the need to ensure
that the scales of environmental management need to be matched
to ecosystem processes, and that the trade-offs -where
promoting one benefit can lead to a decrease in other benefits
- needs to be carefully handled.

In contrast, the
impact of the assessment is most at risk when it falls into
hubristic sloganising along the lines of "scientists have
shown that." with the rider that "governments must
therefore.”. This approach risks undermining efforts to ensure
that poverty alleviation and ecosystem preservation go
hand-in-hand. - SciDev.Net

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