Millennium Ecosystem Assesment

GEF funding will catalyze global, regional, national and local action to conduct a Global Ecosystem Assessment to help bring the best available information and knowledge on ecosystem goods and services to bear on policy and management decisions. It will also build the capacity at all levels to undertake integrated ecosystem assessments and to act on their findings. Through this process, the project will provide an accurate description of the current extent, trends, pressures, conditions and value of different ecosystems of the world, establishing a clear baseline for the year 2000. It will provide a set of pausible scenarios for how the quality and quantity of ecosystem goods and services may change in coming decades in different regions of the world, highlighting trade-offs in the ability of ecosystems to produce these goods and services. It will also assess the response options for different ecosystems, identifying policy, institutional, and technologies that could improve the management of ecosystems. The results will be policy relevant but not policy prescriptive. The project is demand-driven as key users of information generated by the assessment have been involved in the design of the project from the outset and had a clear role in shaping the structure and organization of the project.