Planet Earth, Year 2050

While it may not be a verifiable fact that the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) is the world’s most underappreciated eco-study, it’s definitely the most unevenly appreciated one. When the huge report first emerged last spring after four years, $24 million and the efforts of more than 1,300 scientists in 95 countries, it made headlines elsewhere. In December it was awarded a Zayed Prize, something like an environmentalist Nobel. Here in the United States, though, the media barely registered its existence.

The report’s basic premise is that healthy ecosystems provide humans with a range of “services” — things like food, clean water, clean air, buffers from natural disasters and even spiritual renewal. To the extent that these “ecosystem services” are degraded, so is the quality of human life. And without serious behavior modification, we’re headed for a bad run, Reid said. “We’ve badly mismanaged our ecosystems,” he said. “As long as we regard ecosystem services as free and limitless, we will continue to use them in a way that does not make sense.”

“I’d like to emphasize one fundamental lesson,” he said. “Economic policy can contribute to sustainable ecosystem services over the long run.”

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