No. 1, 2006

Fate of the World Redux: Assessing the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment By Steven F. Hayward

The United Nations’ Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA), a multiyear project designed to improve our knowledge of global environmental conditions, released several more supplemental volumes in January. It is dif- ficult to get a grip on this substantial report, and people on all points of the environmental spectrum can find something to like and dislike in the MA. The MA strikes familiar notes about resource depletion and potentially terminal environmental degradation, but its inclusion of human resiliency and adaptation suggests that the MA may represent a turning point from old-style Malthusian fatalism.

Several large reports from the UN’s Millennium jargon.2 The authors have struggled mightily to Ecosystem Assessment made one-day headlines last complement the massive text with user-friendly year and then disappeared.1 The MA, as it is called flow charts, stylized curves, tables, matrices, color in UN shorthand, is an immense undertaking, maps, and other vivid graphics. But will the MA involving the efforts of more than 1,300 scientists succeed in being useful to policymakers? Its bulk around the world, and its first series of reports total brings to mind Churchill’s quip to an overly ver- more than 2,000 pages. Like the UN Intergovern- bose civil servant: “This report, by its sheer length, mental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the MA defends itself against the risk of being read.” It is has to grapple with the difficulty of addressing a doubtful that very many of the scientists and global issue with myriad dimensions. The January experts associated with the MA have read the release of the final four volumes from the first phase entire product. of the project (bringing the total published so far to The tick-like reflex of the old doomsaying twelve, with more on the way in due course) pro- themes of conventional environmental thinking vides a good occasion for an overview. distorted much of the media coverage of the initial The MA, which is modeled after the IPCC, is release of the MA last year, which tended to por- intended to be “policy relevant,” as distinct from a tray it as a linear successor to the Club of Rome’s scientific review. “The MA did not aim to generate The Limits to Growth report of 1972 or the Global new primary knowledge,” the report explains, “but 2000 report of 1980. The MA disappeared from instead sought to add value to existing information view almost as quickly as the newspaper ink dried, by collating, evaluating, summarizing, interpreting, chiefly because the public is simply tuning out eco- and communicating it in a useful form.” This effort apocalypticism as another example of crying wolf. at synthesis is well done in several areas, especially Both the media coverage and public indifference Environmental Policy Outlook when it draws our attention to the problems of to the MA were unfair. The Malthusian viewpoint water supplies and the unhealthy growth in the at the core of doomsaying is partially defensible. nitrogen cycle. But as with any report a large group The twentieth century experienced a nearly four- of authors compose, there is much repetition and fold increase in —an unprec- Steven F. Hayward ([email protected])is the F. K. edented gain whose impact on both the planet’s Weyerhaeuser Fellow at AEI. resources and human consciousness was bound to

1150 Seventeenth Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036 202.862.5800 www.aei.org - 2 - be equally large. In fact it is possible to marvel that the Same Old Tune in a New Key? impact—and the panicky reaction to it—was not worse than it was. The important point to bear in mind is that On the surface, the MA appears susceptible to the criti- the end of —which has turned out cism that it is merely the latest iteration of the worn-out to be more like a wet firecracker—is in sight. To be sure, Malthusian perspective of doom and gloom about our world population growth is going to continue for several ecological future. The preface contains some familiar- more decades before likely reversing (perhaps dramati- sounding themes, such as the “stark warning” about the cally so), at which point global environmental strains future of the planet because “human activity is putting will begin to ease. Looked at from the long-term point of such strain on the natural functions of Earth that the view that the population boom of the twentieth century ability of the planet’s ecosystems to sustain future gener- was a one-time phenomenon based on advances in med- ations can no longer be taken for granted.”4 Other gifts icine and agriculture, the environmental stresses that to editorial writers who work in the subjunctive mood alarmists bemoan begin to look less inexorable. include the statement that the planet has “much more The larger question is how we manage the transitional red than black on the balance sheet,” and “it is literally a period of the next few decades, as the drive to increase matter of living on borrowed time.” And what global living standards for the world’s poorest will result in environmental report would be complete without adding increased consumption of water and other basic that things look bad “unless human attitudes and actions resources. There is no doubt that there will be significant change”? This phrase and its equivalents should be a environmental stress from this process. Many problems macro keystroke in environmental word processing pro- will get worse before they get better. grams, if they are not already.5 But whether these stresses come together to produce a The idea of assessing ecosystems around the world global environmental collapse depends on how or if dis- and aggregating them into a global picture, is a worthy crete environmental problems are aggregated. Where and necessary undertaking because it can provide us individual cases of unsustainable resource use can be with the information to set intelligent priorities and a identified, such as overdraws of groundwater, collapse of baseline to judge future progress. The effort is fraught fisheries due to overfishing, and net deforestation, an with obvious conceptual problems, starting with defin- uninterrupted trend will lead to environmental calamities. ing what an ecosystem is. The idea of an ecosystem Most synthetic attempts at summing up individual trends appeals to a common-sense understanding of environ- into a macro-model have been wildly wrong in the past, mental problems: Walden Pond might be thought of as and the new attempts to remedy this problem, such as the archetypal layman’s ecosystem. An ecosystem can the very popular “human footprint” models currently in be as small as a single-cell organism that depends on vogue, are rife with methodological problems.3 The MA the balance and interplay of proteins and enzymes, but represents an alternative approach to global environmen- it is also fashionable to think of the Earth as one large tal assessment that deserves to be considered seriously. ecosystem. The contrast between the single cell and Despite its length, the essence of the MA can be dis- the planet suggests the problem of scale in this kind of tilled to two main things. The first is the delineation of inquiry. Even intermediate forms of ecosystems will pre- twenty-four broad “ecosystem services,” including such sent difficulties in understanding, such as the oceans, traditional categories as food and fiber production, which constitute an ecosystem that nonetheless has genetic , land cover, and water and air pollu- remarkable variation: for example, a warm-water coral tion, but also including “cultural, spiritual and aesthetic” reef will have different strengths and vulnerabilities services we enjoy from our ecosystems. The MA than a cold-water kelp bed. attempts to render judgment on the current status of Of the twenty-four “ecosystem services” that the MA these twenty-four categories and what conditions will be sets out to evaluate, fifteen show worsening trends, four like in the year 2050, with assignment of high, medium, show improvement, and the remaining five show no and low certainty. The second main aspect of the MA is change.6 Before looking at these twenty-four indicators four scenarios of how these twenty-four ecosystem serv- more closely, the MA should be contrasted with the ices might play out under different institutional and pol- Heinz Center’s 2002 report on The State of the Nation’s icy regimes. There are strengths and weaknesses in both Ecosystems, an ambitious evaluation of ecosystem condi- of these efforts. tions in the United State alone.7 The Heinz Center - 3 - report identified 103 indicators of ecosystem condition, on climate change as the primary “driver” of ecosystem noting the lack of data available for establishing trends changes over the next fifty years. In other words, the for over half of the indicators, and declining to make syn- MA is susceptible to the criticism that it has become an optic judgments about overall ecosystem health, or even adjunct to the IPCC—that it is merely a climate change of the condition of many specific indicators.8 This more brief in fancy dress. While climate change is a signifi- detailed focus, willingness to let the data sets speak for cant factor in future ecosystem dynamics that obviously themselves, and the restraint in making sweeping gener- cannot be left out or shunted aside, the prominence of alizations contrast markedly with the gloomy conclusions the issue in the MA assures that the effort will get caught of the MA’s summary for policymakers. (The sobriety of in the undertow of existing climate science and policy the Heinz Center’s report also meant that it received controversies. even less media coverage than the MA.) One reason the forthcoming subglobal assessments Not Your Grandfather’s are necessary is that there will be wide variance in ecosystem condition from one nation or region to the A closer reading of the MA, however, calls to mind next, depending on all the usual factors. For example, Mark Twain’s quip that “Wagner’s music is better than while the MA finds only four improving trends and fif- it sounds.” Of course the devil is in the details, but as teen deteriorating trends for the globe as a whole, if a general matter the MA is not your grandfather’s these indicators were examined just for the United limits-to-growth environmentalism. There are some States, it would probably report seventeen improving notable differences between the MA and The Limits to trends, seven with no change, and none with deteriorat- Growth or Global 2000. Unlike those previous forecasts ing trends. The real value of the MA will come if its that essentially projected current trends in a straight- supplemental subglobal assessments provide detailed line fashion and whose margin of error over a much information that allows people and governments on the shorter forecasting period that sometimes approached national and local levels to identify top priority problems. an order of magnitude, the MA does not assume that One difficulty with the MA’s assessment of ecosys- present trends will continue unchanged into even the tems on the global scale is the limits or absence of data, near future. which the MA forthrightly acknowledges: This is where the MA gets interesting and frustrating at the same time. The encouraging aspect of the MA’s Relatively few ecosystem services have been the assumptions and analytical framework is that they are focus of research and monitoring and, as a conse- not static, which was the downfall of previous synoptic quence, research findings and data are often inade- reports about our eco-future. There is also no misan- quate for a detailed global assessment. Moreover, thropy here: the MA notes that the changes humans the data and information that are available are gen- have made to ecosystems have improved the lives of erally related to either the characteristics of the billions of people. There is an encouraging emphasis on ecological system or the characteristics of the social “reforms that focus on global trade and economic liber- system, not to the all-important interactions alization [that] are used to reshape economies and between these systems. Finally, the scientific and governance. There is an emphasis on the creation of assessment tools and models available to undertake markets that allow equitable participation and provide a cross-scale integrated assessment and to project equitable access to goods and services. These policies, future changes in ecosystem services are only now in combination with large investments in global public being developed.9 health and the improvement of education worldwide, generally succeed in promoting economic expansion At this point the lay reader may scratch his head and and lifting many people out of poverty into an expand- wonder, just how, then, is the MA reaching these ing global middle class.” sweeping conclusions and offering projections for the Other glimmers of sound thought include the recog- year 2050? Are they just making it up? nition that the absence of markets plays a large role in In the absence of comprehensive and scalable data on environmental degradation, and the MA calls for the many of the twenty-four individual ecosystem services wider use of markets and market-like mechanisms the MA identifies, the forecasts of the MA rely heavily (such as “cap and trade”) for alleviating environmental - 4 - problems. The MA also singles out agricultural subsidies • “Global Orchestration,” in which “global eco- for special criticism, noting that the $324 billion in sub- nomic and social policies are the primary sidies OECD nations spend per year represents one-third approach to .” This scenario places of the total value of global agricultural output, which emphasis on reducing poverty and inequality, con- not only exposes shocking waste and inefficient alloca- fident that “improved economic well-being will tion of resources, but also contributes to the unnecessary create both the demand for and the means to degradation of land. Along with the criticism of subsi- achieve a well-functioning environment” on an ad dies is a related call for removing trade barriers. There is hoc basis. “Supra-national institutions are well- a welcome emphasis on local knowledge: “Measures to placed to deal with global environmental prob- conserve natural resources are more likely to succeed if lems.” (This is as close as the MA comes to local communities are given ownership of them, share endorsing a formal institutional approach.) Under the benefits, and are involved in decisions.” this scenario, the MA believes the results for There are also sensible acknowledgements of the lim- ecosystem services will be mixed. its of political or administrative remedies for ecological problems, such as this: “Most of the problems with com- • “Adapting Mosaic” is something in-between mand and control arise when it is applied to complex, “Order from Strength” and “Global Orchestra- nonlinear systems that show low levels of predictability. tion,” in which “local and regional management Unfortunately, many ecosystems (and most ecological [are] the primary approach to sustainability.” problems) fit this description. Societal recognition of Under this scenario, there is “a lack of faith in the weaknesses of command and control approaches to global institutions, combined with increased natural resource management, and the degree to which understanding of the importance of resilience the search for alternatives is successful, is a key aspect of and local flexibility lead to approaches that the MA scenarios.”10 favor experimentation and local control of ecosystem management.” This, the MA judges, Scenarios, Scenarios . . . will also have mixed results for ecological performance. The MA’s dominant scenario component is supposed to make up for the gaps in data and incompleteness of our • “TechnoGarden,” which sounds more like a 1980s knowledge of ecosystem dynamics. Despite the report’s heavy-metal band than an eco-governance sce- massive length, the MA’s four scenarios are remarkably nario, emphasizes the dispersion of technological unspecific as to either institutional form or policy design. approaches to ecological problems. The MA casts Again, the MA forthrightly draws back from such an a skeptical eye at the promise of technology, seeing ambition: “The MA scenarios were not designed to it as less resilient than other approaches, with determine optimal policies for any specific locale, nation, more vulnerability to surprises. international bloc, or Earth as a whole.” There are no calls for specific international laws, treaties, or protocols None of these scenarios is presented as mutually exclu- like Kyoto, or for any formal institutions like a wistfully sive of the others (except perhaps “Order from imagined World Environment Agency. Strength”), and the MA explicitly says the future might The four scenarios have vivid and suggestive titles: involve some mixing of elements from each. Which leaves readers and policymakers exactly where? • “Order from Strength,” which represents “a region- Although the MA offers projections of ecosystem out- alized and fragmented world concerned with secur- comes in the year 2050 based on each scenario, these ity and protection, emphasizing primarily regional scenarios are driven less by rigorous models than by markets, and paying little attention to the common narrative imagination. All the scenarios—except the good, and with an individualistic attitude toward “Rumsfeld Way”—seem to indulge in the synoptic fal- ecosystem management.” This frankly nationalistic lacy that the interconnections of environmental factors perspective might be thought of colloquially as the cannot only be understood but also rationally controlled “Rumsfeld Way,” and naturally the world’s ecosys- if only we had the raised consciousness, the “will,” and tems fare worst under this scenario. the institutions to do so.11 - 5 -

As mentioned at the outset, the FIGURE 1 MA has attracted little attention Relationship of 2006 EPI and GDP Per Capita and even less controversy, which on the surface is surprising since 100 the MA is potentially more all- 90 New Zealand UK encompassing in its political and 80 US policy implications than the IPCC’s Norway periodic climate reports. The dif- 70 ference is that the IPCC effort 60 is connected to an actual policy dispute—greenhouse gas emission 50 caps and the Kyoto process— 40 involving large economic costs. By comparison the MA is merely an 30

2 intellectual exercise. The MA’s 20 Niger R =0.7017 restraint and reticence about call- (EPI) Index Performance Environmental ing for specific institutional and 10 $100 $1,000 $10,000 $100,000 policy strategies is ironically its GDP Per Capita (log scale) undoing; a more specific policy document would have attracted SOURCE: Pilot 2006 Environmental Performance Index more attention—and criticism. Instead, the MA is likely to collect dust on a shelf through 16 indicators in six policy categories for alongside The Limits to Growth and Global 2000. Per- which all governments are being held accountable.” haps what it really needed was a good editor. Under this framework, New Zealand received the top This makes one wonder whether the outcome of mark on the EPI rankings, with a composite score of the MA is commensurate with the massive effort— 88; the was ranked twenty-eighth, with not to mention paper—put into it. But perhaps a score of 78.5, just ahead of Cyprus and just behind attempting to marry scientific assessment of ecosystem the Netherlands. (The EPI ranks 133 countries in all.) conditions under conditions of limited data with a sce- Perhaps the most significant finding of this revised nario exercise is destined to be an exercise in futility. methodology by the Yale/CIESIN team is the more A potentially more usable framework for evaluating robust correlation between wealth and environmental our capacity for managing environmental problems performance, which is displayed in figure 1. The curve on a global scale is the Pilot 2006 Environmental Per- showing the relationship between the EPI score and formance Index (EPI), produced by the Yale Center for per-capita income is much steeper than the curve gen- Environmental Law and Policy and the Center for erated by the same comparison under the previous International Earth Science Information Network Yale/CIESIN Environmental Sustainability Index. (CIESIN) at Columbia University.12 The EPI is the The EPI’s framework and findings are not incompat- successor to the Environmental Sustainability Index that ible with the MA, but it is a much simpler, shorter, and the Yale/CIESIN consortium has been producing for more user-friendly document. It allows us to make year- the World Economic Forum for several years, and it over-year judgments of the all-important question of contains a number of refinements of the previous whether our institutions and policies are adapting to the methodology. unfolding challenges of environmental protection, even In contrast to the MA or the various “ecological as we work on building up our monitoring capabilities footprint” models that attempt to aggregate global and understanding of how complex ecosystems work on environmental conditions, the EPI tries to provide all scales. If you think of the MA and the EPI as ecosys- objective metrics of environmental performance on a tems themselves, there is little doubt which model is country-by-country basis. As the authors describe it: more sustainable. “The EPI focuses on current on-the-ground outcomes AEI editor Scott R. Palmer worked with Mr. Hayward to edit and across a core set of environmental issues tracked produce this Environmental Policy Outlook. - 6 - Notes Ecosystem Services Is Needed to Achieve Global Develop- ment Goals,” news release accompanying the synthesis report, 1. Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, Living beyond Our March 30, 2005. Means: Natural Assets and Human Well-Being (New York: 5. An example of the long pedigree of this kind of envi- Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2006), available at ronmental unctuousness can be found in Fairfield Osborn’s http://www.millenniumassessment.org/en/index.aspx. 1949 book Our Plundered Planet, in which Osborn warned 2. A random example, from page 453 of “Scenario Analy- “Do we need another catastrophic warning from nature to stir sis”: “Examples of deep uncertainties are nonlinear responses of us to further action, or can we not now accept the many evi- complex systems, emerging properties and path-dependencies, dences of approaching crisis and take steps to ward it off?” and generally unpredictable behavior that emerges due to Fairfield Osborn, Our Plundered Planet (Boston: Little and branching points, bifurcations, and complex temporal and Brown, 1949), 199. spatial dynamics.” 6. The twenty-four ecosystem services are: food and fiber 3. See, for example, the Global Footprint Network web- (broken down into eight subcategories), genetic resources, site at http://www.footprintnetwork.org/index.php. For a biochemicals, water, air quality regulation, climate regulation, review of this issue, see Steven F. Hayward, “Sustainable water regulation, erosion regulation, water purification, dis- Development in the Balance,” Environmental Policy Outlook ease regulation, pest regulation, pollination, natural hazard (September–October 2002), available at www.aei.org/ regulation, spiritual and religious values, aesthetic values, and publication14200/. recreation/ecotourism. 4. The four main findings are summarized as follows: 7. For a review of the Heinz Center report, see Steven F. “Over the past 50 years, humans have changed ecosystems Hayward, “The State of the Nations Ecosystems: A Review,” more rapidly and extensively than in any comparable period Environmental Policy Outlook (November 2002), available at of time in human history, largely to meet rapidly growing www.aei.org/publication14447/. demands for food, fresh water, timber, fiber and fuel. This has 8. The MA’s synopsis report also acknowledges data gaps: resulted in a substantial and largely irreversible loss in the “Many research needs and information gaps were identified in diversity of life on earth. this assessment, and actions to address those needs could yield “The changes that have been made to ecosystems have substantial benefits in the form of improved information for contributed to substantial net gains in human well-being and policy and action” (39). economic development, but these gains have been achieved 9. Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, Ecosystems and at growing costs in the form of the degradation of many Human Well-Being: Scenarios, vol. 2 (New York: Millennium ecosystem services, increased risks of nonlinear changes, and Ecosystem Assessment, 2006), xvi. the exacerbation of poverty for some groups of people. These 10. Ibid, 60. problems, unless addressed, will substantially diminish the 11. Jared Diamond’s new book Collapse, for example, con- benefits that future generations obtain from ecosystems. cludes with several decontextualized paeans about having “The degradation of ecosystem services could grow signifi- “the courage to practice long-term thinking, and to make cantly worse during the first half of this century and is a bar- bold, courageous, anticipatory decisions at a time when prob- rier to achieving the Millennium Development Goals. lems become perceptible but before they have reached crisis “The challenge of reversing the degradation of ecosystems proportions” and “the courage to make painful decisions while meeting increasing demands for their services can be about values.” This is not very helpful. Jared Diamond, Col- partially met under some scenarios that the MA has con- lapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (New York: sidered but these involve significant changes in policies, insti- Viking Books, 2004), 522–523. tutions and practices that are not currently under way. Many 12. Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy and options exist to conserve or enhance specific ecosystem serv- Columbia University’s Center for International Earth Science ices in ways that reduce negative tradeoffs or that provide Information Network, Pilot 2006 Environmental Performance positive synergies with other ecosystem services.” Millennium Index (New Haven, CT: Yale Center for Environmental Law Ecosystem Assessment, “Experts Say that Attention to and Policy, 2006), available at http://www.yale.edu/epi/.

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