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16.9. Mooney

Keynote Presentations from the 4th ALTER-Net Summer School, Peyresq 5 - 17 September 2009

 

Speaker: Harold A. Mooney

hmooney -at- stanford.edu

Department of Biological Sciences, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305, USA

 

Title of the talk: The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment - Why it happened. Will it happen again? (pdf: 1MB)

 

Summary of the talk and discussion by Daniela Babicová (pdf)

 

Abstract

The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment - why it happened. Will it happen again?

The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) has received wide acceptance across a large community extending from scientists to industrialists and policy makers. Given its success there have been calls for a follow up assessment or even reassessments spaced at regular intervals. In parallel there have been calls for a biodiversity assessment (IMOSEB). These two efforts have converged. We will discuss the history of the follow up efforts, the nature of their support as well as the resistance and focus on where we are today in this movement. Any follow-up would have to have some features of the initial assessment in order to provide a common metric of change in order to evaluate progress, stagnation, or advances in sustaining ecosystem services. Importantly though new science will have to be brought to bear on these issues since the original conceptual framework was just that ― conceptual. At present there are many advances on actually how to quantify services and ways to stimulate markets for them, as one example. There are many other advances in the natural/social science interface that will be useful in further efforts. Some ideas for a follow up agenda will be given as a springboard for group discussion.

 

Recommended background literature on this presentation:

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