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Chapter 1

MA Conceptual Framework

Main Messages . ............................................

1.1

Introduction ...........................................

1.2

What Is the Problem? ....................................

1.3

Conceptual Framework

..................................

1.3.1

Ecosystems and Their Services

1.3.2

Human Well-being and Poverty Reduction

1.3.3

Drivers of Change

1.3.4

Cross-scale Interactions and Assessment

1.4

Values Associated with Ecosystems .........................

1.5

Assessment Tools . . ....................................

1.6

Strategies and Interventions . . .............................

BOXES

1.1

Key Deﬁnitions

1.2

Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Conceptual Framework

1.3

Reporting Categories Used in the Millennium Ecosystem

Assessment

1.4

Valuation of Ecosystem Services

FIGURES

1.1

Linkages between Ecosystem Services and Human Well-

being

This chapter provides the summary of Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, Ecosystems and Human Well-being: A Framework for Assessment (Island

Press, 2003), pp. 1–25, which was prepared by an extended conceptual framework writing team of 51 authors and 10 contributing authors.

Ecosystems and Human Well-being: Current State and Trends

ﬁndings of the MA, which will also help meet the needs of others

in government, the private sector, and civil society. The MA

should help to achieve the United Nations Millennium Develop-

ment Goals and to carry out the Plan of Implementation of the

2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development. It has mobi-

lized hundreds of scientists from countries around the world to

provide information and clarify science concerning issues of

greatest relevance to decision-makers. The MA has identiﬁed

areas of broad scientiﬁc agreement and also pointed to areas of

continuing scientiﬁc debate.

The assessment framework developed for the MA offers deci-

sion-makers a mechanism to:

•

Main Messages

Human well-being and progress toward sustainable development are vi-

tally dependent upon improving the management of Earth’s ecosystems

to ensure their conservation and sustainable use. But while demands for

ecosystem services such as food and clean water are growing, human actions

are at the same time diminishing the capability of many ecosystems to meet

these demands.

Sound policy and management interventions can often reverse ecosys-

tem degradation and enhance the contributions of ecosystems to human

well-being, but knowing when and how to intervene requires substantial un-

derstanding of both the ecological and the social systems involved. Better

information cannot guarantee improved decisions, but it is a prerequisite for

sound decision-making.

Identify options that can better achieve core human develop-

ment and sustainability goals. All countries and communities

are grappling with the challenge of meeting growing demands

for food, clean water, health, and employment. And decision-

makers in the private and public sectors must also balance eco-

nomic growth and social development with the need for envi-

ronmental conservation. All of these concerns are linked

directly or indirectly to the world’s ecosystems. The MA

process, at all scales, was designed to bring the best science to

bear on the needs of decision-makers concerning these links

between ecosystems, human development, and sustainability.

The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment was established to help provide

the knowledge base for improved decisions and to build capacity for

analyzing and supplying this information.

This chapter presents the conceptual and methodological approach that

the MA used to assess options that can enhance the contribution of

ecosystems to human well-being. This same approach should provide a

suitable basis for governments, the private sector, and civil society to factor

considerations of ecosystems and ecosystem services into their own planning

and actions.

•

Better understand the trade-offs involved—across sectors and

stakeholders—in decisions concerning the environment. Eco-

system-related problems have historically been approached

issue by issue, but rarely by pursuing multisectoral objectives.

This approach has not withstood the test of time. Progress

toward one objective such as increasing food production has

often been at the cost of progress toward other objectives such

as conserving biological diversity or improving water quality.

The MA framework complements sectoral assessments with

information on the full impact of potential policy choices

across sectors and stakeholders.

1.1 Introduction

Humanity has always depended on the services provided by the

biosphere and its ecosystems. Further, the biosphere is itself the

product of life on Earth. The composition of the atmosphere and

soil, the cycling of elements through air and waterways, and many

other ecological assets are all the result of living processes—and all

are maintained and replenished by living ecosystems. The human

species, while buffered against environmental immediacies by cul-

ture and technology, is ultimately fully dependent on the ﬂow of

ecosystem services.

In his April 2000 Millennium Report to the United Nations

General Assembly, in recognition of the growing burden that de-

graded ecosystems are placing on human well-being and eco-

nomic development and the opportunity that better managed

ecosystems provide for meeting the goals of poverty eradication

and sustainable development, United Nations Secretary-General

Koﬁ Annan stated that:

It is impossible to devise effective environmental policy unless it is

based on sound scientiﬁc information. While major advances in data

collection have been made in many areas, large gaps in our knowledge

remain. In particular, there has never been a comprehensive global

assessment of the world’s major ecosystems. The planned Millennium

Ecosystem Assessment, a major international collaborative effort to

map the health of our planet, is a response to this need.

The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment was established with

the involvement of governments, the private sector, nongovern-

mental organizations, and scientists to provide an integrated as-

sessment of the consequences of ecosystem change for human

well-being and to analyze options available to enhance the con-

servation of ecosystems and their contributions to meeting human

needs. The Convention on Biological Diversity, the Convention

to Combat Desertiﬁcation, the Convention on Migratory Spe-

cies, and the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands plan to use the

•

Align response options with the level of governance where they

can be most effective. Effective management of ecosystems will

require actions at all scales, from the local to the global.

Human actions now directly or inadvertently affect virtually

all of the world’s ecosystems; actions required for the manage-

ment of ecosystems refer to the steps that humans can take to

modify their direct or indirect inﬂuences on ecosystems. The

management and policy options available and the concerns of

stakeholders differ greatly across these scales. The priority

areas for biodiversity conservation in a country as deﬁned

based on ‘‘global’’ value, for example, would be very different

from those as deﬁned based on the value to local communi-

ties. The multiscale assessment framework developed for the

MA provides a new approach for analyzing policy options at

all scales—from local communities to international conven-

tions.

1.2 What Is the Problem?

Ecosystem services are the beneﬁts people obtain from ecosys-

tems, which the MA describes as provisioning, regulating, sup-

porting, and cultural services. (See Box 1.1.) Ecosystem services

include products such as food, fuel, and ﬁber; regulating services

such as climate regulation and disease control; and nonmaterial

beneﬁts such as spiritual or aesthetic beneﬁts. Changes in these

services affect human well-being in many ways. (See Figure 1.1.)

The demand for ecosystem services is now so great that trade-

offs among services have become the rule. A country can increase

food supply by converting a forest to agriculture, for example, but

MA Conceptual Framework

per capita rate, and are buffered from changes in their availability

(often at a substantial cost) through their ability to purchase scarce

ecosystem services or substitutes. For example, even though a

number of marine ﬁsheries have been depleted in the past century,

the supply of ﬁsh to wealthy consumers has not been disrupted

since ﬁshing ﬂeets have been able to shift to previously underex-

ploited stocks. In contrast, poor people often lack access to alter-

nate services and are highly vulnerable to ecosystem changes that

result in famine, drought, or ﬂoods. They frequently live in loca-

tions particularly sensitive to environmental threats, and they lack

ﬁnancial and institutional buffers against these dangers. Degrada-

tion of coastal ﬁshery resources, for instance, results in a decline

in protein consumed by the local community since ﬁshers may

not have access to alternate sources of ﬁsh and community mem-

bers may not have enough income to purchase ﬁsh. Degradation

affects their very survival.

Changes in ecosystems affect not just humans but countless

other species as well. The management objectives that people set

for ecosystems and the actions that they take are inﬂuenced not

just by the consequences of ecosystem changes for humans but

also by the importance people place on considerations of the in-

trinsic value of species and ecosystems. Intrinsic value is the value

of something in and for itself, irrespective of its utility for some-

one else. For example, villages in India protect ‘‘spirit sanctuaries’’

in relatively natural states, even though a strict cost-beneﬁt calcu-

lation might favor their conversion to agriculture. Similarly, many

countries have passed laws protecting endangered species based

on the view that these species have a right to exist, even if their

protection results in net economic costs. Sound ecosystem man-

agement thus involves steps to address the utilitarian links of peo-

ple to ecosystems as well as processes that allow considerations

of the intrinsic value of ecosystems to be factored into decision-

making.

The degradation of ecosystem services has many causes, in-

cluding excessive demand for ecosystem services stemming from

economic growth, demographic changes, and individual choices.

Market mechanisms do not always ensure the conservation of

ecosystem services either because markets do not exist for services

such as cultural or regulatory services or, where they do exist,

because policies and institutions do not enable people living

within the ecosystem to beneﬁt from services it may provide to

others who are far away. For example, institutions are now only

beginning to be developed to enable those beneﬁting from carbon

sequestration to provide local managers with an economic incen-

tive to leave a forest uncut, while strong economic incentives

often exist for managers to harvest the forest. Also, even if a mar-

ket exists for an ecosystem service, the results obtained through

the market may be socially or ecologically undesirable. Properly

managed, the creation of ecotourism opportunities in a country

can create strong economic incentives for the maintenance of the

cultural services provided by ecosystems, but poorly managed

ecotourism activities can degrade the very resource on which they

depend. Finally, markets are often unable to address important

intra- and intergenerational equity issues associated with manag-

ing ecosystems for this and future generations, given that some

changes in ecosystem services are irreversible.

The world has witnessed in recent decades not just dramatic

changes to ecosystems but equally profound changes to social sys-

tems that shape both the pressures on ecosystems and the oppor-

tunities to respond. The relative inﬂuence of individual nation-

states has diminished with the growth of power and inﬂuence

of a far more complex array of institutions, including regional

BOX 1.1

Key Deﬁnitions

Ecosystem. An ecosystem is a dynamic complex of plant, animal, and

microorganism communities and the nonliving environment interacting

as a functional unit. Humans are an integral part of ecosystems. Eco-

systems vary enormously in size; a temporary pond in a tree hollow

and an ocean basin can both be ecosystems.

Ecosystem services. Ecosystem services are the beneﬁts people ob-

tain from ecosystems. These include provisioning services such as

food and water; regulating services such as regulation of ﬂoods,

drought, land degradation, and disease; supporting services such as

soil formation and nutrient cycling; and cultural services such as recre-

ational, spiritual, religious and other nonmaterial beneﬁts.

Well-being. Human well-being has multiple constituents, including basic

material for a good life, freedom of choice and action, health, good

social relations, and security. Well-being is at the opposite end of a

continuum from poverty, which has been deﬁned as a ‘‘pronounced

deprivation in well-being.’’ The constituents of well-being, as experi-

enced and perceived by people, are situation-dependent, reﬂecting

local geography, culture, and ecological circumstances.

in so doing it decreases the supply of services that may be of equal

or greater importance, such as clean water, timber, ecotourism

destinations, or ﬂood regulation and drought control. There are

many indications that human demands on ecosystems will grow

still greater in the coming decades. Current estimates of 3 billion

more people and a quadrupling of the world economy by 2050

imply a formidable increase in demand for and consumption of

biological and physical resources, as well as escalating impacts on

ecosystems and the services they provide.

The problem posed by the growing demand for ecosystem

services is compounded by increasingly serious degradation in the

capability of ecosystems to provide these services. World ﬁsheries

are now declining due to overﬁshing, for instance, and a signiﬁ-

cant amount of agricultural land has been degraded in the past

half-century by erosion, salinization, compaction, nutrient deple-

tion, pollution, and urbanization. Other human-induced impacts

on ecosystems include alteration of the nitrogen, phosphorous,

sulfur, and carbon cycles, causing acid rain, algal blooms, and ﬁsh

kills in rivers and coastal waters, along with contributions to cli-

mate change. In many parts of the world, this degradation of eco-

system services is exacerbated by the associated loss of the

knowledge and understanding held by local communities—

knowledge that sometimes could help to ensure the sustainable

use of the ecosystem.

This combination of ever-growing demands being placed on

increasingly degraded ecosystems seriously diminishes the pros-

pects for sustainable development. Human well-being is affected

not just by gaps between ecosystem service supply and demand

but also by the increased vulnerability of individuals, communi-

ties, and nations. Productive ecosystems, with their array of ser-

vices, provide people and communities with resources and

options they can use as insurance in the face of natural catastro-

phes or social upheaval. While well-managed ecosystems reduce

risks and vulnerability, poorly managed systems can exacerbate

them by increasing risks of ﬂood, drought, crop failure, or disease.

Ecosystem degradation tends to harm rural populations more

directly than urban populations and has its most direct and severe

impact on poor people. The wealthy control access to a greater

share of ecosystem services, consume those services at a higher

Ecosystems and Human Well-being: Current State and Trends

CONSTITUENTS OF WELL-BEING

ECOSYSTEM SERVICES

Security

PERSONAL SAFETY

SECURE RESOURCE ACCESS

SECURITY FROM DISASTERS

Provisioning

FOOD

FRESH WATER

WOOD AND FIBER

FUEL

...

Basic material

for good life

ADEQUATE LIVELIHOODS

SUFFICIENT NUTRITIOUS FOOD

SHELTER

ACCESS TO GOODS

Freedom

of choice

and action

OPPORTUNITY TO BE

ABLE TO ACHIEVE

WHAT AN INDIVIDUAL

VALUES DOING

AND BEING

Regulating

CLIMATE REGULATION

FLOOD REGULATION

DISEASE REGULATION

WATER PURIFICATION

...

Supporting

NUTRIENT CYCLING

SOIL FORMATION

PRIMARY PRODUCTION

...

Health

STRENGTH

FEELING WELL

ACCESS TO CLEAN AIR

AND WATER

Cultural

AESTHETIC

SPIRITUAL

EDUCATIONAL

RECREATIONAL

...

Good social relations

SOCIAL COHESION

MUTUAL RESPECT

ABILITY TO HELP OTHERS

LIFE ON EARTH - BIODIVERSITY

ARROW’S COLOR

Potential for mediation by

socioeconomic factors

ARROW’S WIDTH

Intensity of linkages between ecosystem

services and human well-being

Low

Weak

Medium

High

Strong

Figure 1.1. Linkages between Ecosystem Services and Human Well-being. This Figure depicts the strength of linkages between catego-

ries of ecosystem services and components of human well-being that are commonly encountered and includes indications of the extent to

which it is possible for socioeconomic factors to mediate the linkage. (For example, if it is possible to purchase a substitute for a degraded

ecosystem service, then there is a high potential for mediation.) The strength of the linkages and the potential for mediation differ in different

ecosystems and regions. In addition to the inﬂuence of ecosystem services on human well-being depicted here, other factors—including other

environmental factors as well as economic, social, technological, and cultural factors—inﬂuence human well-being, and ecosystems are in

turn affected by changes in human well-being. (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment)

governments, multinational companies, the United Nations, and

civil society organizations. Stakeholders have become more in-

volved in decision-making. Given the multiple actors whose de-

cisions now strongly inﬂuence ecosystems, the challenge of

providing information to decision-makers has grown. At the same

time, the new institutional landscape may provide an

unprecedented opportunity for information concerning ecosys-

tems to make a major difference. Improvements in ecosystem

management to enhance human well-being will require new in-

stitutional and policy arrangements and changes in rights and ac-

cess to resources that may be more possible today under these

conditions of rapid social change than they have ever been before.

Like the beneﬁts of increased education or improved gover-

nance, the protection, restoration, and enhancement of ecosystem

services tends to have multiple and synergistic beneﬁts. Already,

many governments are beginning to recognize the need for more

effective management of these basic life-support systems. Exam-

ples of signiﬁcant progress toward sustainable management of bio-

logical resources can also be found in civil society, in indigenous

and local communities, and in the private sector.

1.3 Conceptual Framework

The conceptual framework for the MA places human well-being

as the central focus for assessment, while recognizing that biodiv-

ersity and ecosystems also have intrinsic value and that people take

decisions concerning ecosystems based on considerations of well-

being as well as intrinsic value. (See Box 1.2.) The MA concep-

tual framework assumes that a dynamic interaction exists between

people and other parts of ecosystems, with the changing human

condition serving to both directly and indirectly drive change in

ecosystems and with changes in ecosystems causing changes in

human well-being. At the same time, many other factors indepen-

dent of the environment change the human condition, and many

natural forces are inﬂuencing ecosystems.

The MA focuses particular attention on the linkages between

ecosystem services and human well-being. The assessment deals

with the full range of ecosystems—from those relatively undis-

turbed, such as natural forests, to landscapes with mixed patterns

of human use and ecosystems intensively managed and modiﬁed

by humans, such as agricultural land and urban areas.

MA Conceptual Framework

A full assessment of the interactions between people and eco-

systems requires a multiscale approach because it better reﬂects

the multiscale nature of decision-making, allows the examination

of driving forces that may be exogenous to particular regions, and

provides a means of examining the differential impact of ecosys-

tem changes and policy responses on different regions and groups

within regions.

This section explains in greater detail the characteristics of

each of the components of the MA conceptual framework, mov-

ing clockwise from the lower left corner of the Figure in Box 1.2.

ﬁsheries as a result of water quality degradation from the fertilizer

runoff might outweigh those beneﬁts.

For the purpose of analysis and assessment, a pragmatic view

of ecosystem boundaries must be adopted, depending on the

questions being asked. A well-deﬁned ecosystem has strong inter-

actions among its components and weak interactions across its

boundaries. A useful choice of ecosystem boundary is one where

a number of discontinuities coincide, such as in the distribution

of organisms, soil types, drainage basins, and depth in a water-

body. At a larger scale, regional and even globally distributed eco-

systems can be evaluated based on a commonality of basic

structural units. The global assessment being undertaken by the

MA reports on marine, coastal, inland water, forest, dryland, is-

land, mountain, polar, cultivated, and urban regions. These re-

gions are not ecosystems themselves, but each contains a number

of ecosystems. (See Box 1.3.)

People seek multiple services from ecosystems and thus per-

ceive the condition of given ecosystems in relation to their ability

to provide the services desired. Various methods can be used to

assess the ability of ecosystems to deliver particular services. With

those answers in hand, stakeholders have the information they

need to decide on a mix of services best meeting their needs. The

MA considers criteria and methods to provide an integrated view

of the condition of ecosystems. The condition of each category

of ecosystem services is evaluated in somewhat different ways,

although in general a full assessment of any service requires con-

siderations of stocks, ﬂows, and resilience of the service.

1.3.1 Ecosystems and Their Services

An ecosystem is a dynamic complex of plant, animal, and micro-

organism communities and the nonliving environment interact-

ing as a functional unit. Humans are an integral part of

ecosystems. Ecosystems provide a variety of beneﬁts to people,

including provisioning, regulating, cultural, and supporting ser-

vices. Provisioning services are the products people obtain from

ecosystems, such as food, fuel, ﬁber, fresh water, and genetic re-

sources. Regulating services are the beneﬁts people obtain from

the regulation of ecosystem processes, including air quality main-

tenance, climate regulation, erosion control, regulation of human

diseases, and water puriﬁcation. Cultural services are the nonma-

terial beneﬁts people obtain from ecosystems through spiritual en-

richment, cognitive development, reﬂection, recreation, and

aesthetic experiences. Supporting services are those that are nec-

essary for the production of all other ecosystem services, such as

primary production, production of oxygen, and soil formation.

Biodiversity and ecosystems are closely related concepts. Bio-

diversity is the variability among living organisms from all sources,

including terrestrial, marine, and other aquatic ecosystems and the

ecological complexes of which they are part. It includes diversity

within and between species and diversity of ecosystems. Diversity

is a structural feature of ecosystems, and the variability among

ecosystems is an element of biodiversity. Products of biodiversity

include many of the services produced by ecosystems (such as

food and genetic resources), and changes in biodiversity can in-

ﬂuence all the other services they provide. In addition to the im-

portant role of biodiversity in providing ecosystem services, the

diversity of living species has intrinsic value independent of any

human concern.

The concept of an ecosystem provides a valuable framework

for analyzing and acting on the linkages between people and the

environment. For that reason, the ‘‘ecosystem approach’’ has been

endorsed by the Convention on Biological Diversity, and the MA

conceptual framework is entirely consistent with this approach.

The CBD states that the ecosystem approach is a strategy for the

integrated management of land, water, and living resources that

promotes conservation and sustainable use in an equitable way.

This approach recognizes that humans, with their cultural diver-

sity, are an integral component of many ecosystems.

In order to implement the ecosystem approach, decision-

makers need to understand the multiple effects on an ecosystem of

any management or policy change. By way of analogy, decision-

makers would not make a decision about ﬁnancial policy in a

country without examining the condition of the economic sys-

tem, since information on the economy of a single sector such as

manufacturing would be insufﬁcient. The same need to examine

the consequences of changes for multiple sectors applies to eco-

systems. For instance, subsidies for fertilizer use may increase food

production, but sound decisions also require information on

whether the potential reduction in the harvests of downstream

1.3.2 Human Well-being and Poverty Reduction

Human well-being has multiple constituents, including the basic

material for a good life, freedom of choice and action, health,

good social relations, and security. Poverty is also multidimen-

sional and has been deﬁned as the pronounced deprivation of

well-being. How well-being, ill-being, or poverty are experi-

enced and expressed depends on context and situation, reﬂecting

local physical, social, and personal factors such as geography, envi-

ronment, age, gender, and culture. In all contexts, however, eco-

systems are essential for human well-being through their

provisioning, regulating, cultural, and supporting services.

Human intervention in ecosystems can amplify the beneﬁts to

human society. However, evidence in recent decades of escalating

human impacts on ecological systems worldwide raises concerns

about the spatial and temporal consequences of ecosystem changes

detrimental to human well-being. Ecosystem changes affect

human well-being in the following ways:

•

Security is affected both by changes in provisioning services,

which affect supplies of food and other goods and the likeli-

hood of conﬂict over declining resources, and by changes in

regulating services, which could inﬂuence the frequency and

magnitude of ﬂoods, droughts, landslides, or other catastro-

phes. It can also be affected by changes in cultural services as,

for example, when the loss of important ceremonial or spiri-

tual attributes of ecosystems contributes to the weakening of

social relations in a community. These changes in turn affect

material well-being, health, freedom and choice, security, and

good social relations.

•

Access to basic material for a good life is strongly linked to

both provisioning services such as food and ﬁber production

and regulating services, including water puriﬁcation.

•

Health is strongly linked to both provisioning services such as

food production and regulating services, including those that

inﬂuence the distribution of disease-transmitting insects and

of irritants and pathogens in water and air. Health can also be

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