Millenium Ecosystem Assessment – Main Findings and Reaction

United Nations goals to halve poverty and hunger by 2015 will not be met, and hunger and malnutrition will remain problem even in 2050 unless governments pay greater attention to what nature does for humanity, says a UN report published on 30 March.

The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (launched on 30 March 2005 in London, Tokyo, Beijing, Delhi, Cairo, Nairobi, Washington and Brasilia) was prepared over the past four years by 1300 scientists from 95 countries. This scientific assessment of the impact that changes to ecosystems will have on human well-being is a joint project of a range of UN and international scientific agencies and NGOs.

Friends of the Earth International welcomes the Millennium Ecosystem Assessments recognition of environmental limits the constraints nature places on what we can take out or put into the environment.

We would have liked to see greater recognition of the disparities in consumption between countries. Northern countries have consumed more than their fair share of the worlds resources. They bear the greatest responsibility for the pressure that ecosystems are now under, said Friends of the Earth International Chair Meena Raman in Malaysia.