Interim Report - TEEB

Table 2.1: Ecosystem services and the Millennium Development Goals: links and trade-offs
Ecosystem Related Links with Conflicting Evaluation
services MDG targets outcome
Provisioning MDG 1: Eradicate Steady daily supplies of Greater conflicts over Strong and direct links:
and regulating extreme poverty water, fuelwood and food: water, exploitation of Intervention needs to be
services and hunger these influence the material top soil, coastal and receptive to ecosystem
minimum standard of the marine resources and services, biodiversity
lives of the poor, alleviating the resilience of agri- and the resilience of
poverty and hunger biodiversity could cultivated ecosystems
constitute trade-offs
Services from, MDG 3: Fuelwood and water: There could be Indirect link
wetlands and Promote gender adequate availability and greater extraction of
forests equality and and proximity – would groundwater. The
empower women help gender equality by enforcement of land
reducing this burden that rights for women
falls mainly on women would, however,
(see Box 2.3)
ensure the prevention
of biodiversity loss to
a greater extent
Provisioning MDG 5: Improve Better availability of clean Indirect link
(medicinal maternal health water and traditional medical
plants) and
services would create
regulating
enabling conditions (see
services (water) Box 2.5)
Provisioning MDG 6: Combat This would be facilitated by Indirect link
and regulating HIV/AIDS, malaria widening the availability of
services and other dieases clean water
Provisioning MDG 8: Develop a Fair and equitable trade Indirect link
services Global Partnership practices and a healthy
for Development world economic order
would reflect the true
cost of export/import
from the ecosystem
services perspective
Provisioning MDG 4: Reduce Creating enabling Indirect link
and regulating child mortality conditions, e.g. through
services clean water (see Box 2.5)
Provisioning MDG 2: Achieve Provisioning services might Weak or unclear link
and regulating universal primary be affected by expansion
services education of education-related
infrastructure (schools
and roads)
The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) represent the
world’s ambition to attack poverty. Anecdotal evidence
abounds showing that achievement of these goals assumes
sound environmental practice and governance. An example
that powerfully illustrates this point is that of Haiti (see Box
2.5), where forest degradation and its consequences have
jeopardized water availability and agricultural productivity
to the point where hunger and poverty elimination (MDG1)
has proved impossible, and have severely affected health
and child mortality (MDG4, MDG5 and MDG6), to name
some of the MDG linkages. In Table 2.1, we map ecosystem
services against the MDGs. The extent of linkage
is deep and broad, suggesting that there are significant
risks to the achievement of all MDGs, and not just
MDG7 about environmental sustainability, if the current
pace of ecosystem degradation and biodiversity losses
continues unchecked.
BUSINESS-AS-USUAL IS NOT AN OPTION
If no major new policy measures are put in place, past trends
of biodiversity and ecosystem service loss will continue. In
Biodiversity, ecosystems and human welfare
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