PARENT SESSION
Special Session 12: Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Part I: A synthesis of core findings
Organized by: EM Bennett and H Mooney
Thursday, August 11, 8:00 AM - 11:30 AM, Exhibit Hall 210a-e, Level 2, Palais des congrès de Montréal

Ecosystem assessments across scales: Findings of the subglobal assessments.

Samper, Cristian^*,, Capistrano, Doris,

ABSTRACT- The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) included a sub-global working group to assess differences in the importance of ecosystem services for human well-being around the world. This is one of the innovations of the MA compared to other international assessments, which usually focus on global or regional scales. We included and designed a total of 33 case studies to assess the importance of ecosystem services for human well-being at local, national and regional scales. Each study was coordinated and carried out by a local or national institution and results were compared across regions, ecosystems and services. The areas covered in these assessments range from small villages in India, cities like Stockholm (Sweden) and Sao Paulo (Brazil), whole countries like Portugal and Large regions like Southern Africa. The results from these studies indicate that ecosystem services are important for many dimensions of human well-being, some of which are best observed at local scales. Examples include spiritual and cultural services. We also found that the condition and trends of ecosystem and the drivers of change may depend on the scale of analysis. The conclusions from sub-global assessments were sometimes different from the results derived from global analysis for biodiversity and water resources. There are diverse response options to enhance human well-being and conserve ecosystem services, involving actors at different scales. The value of conducting integrated assessments was also evident. We found that the scale at which an assessment is undertaken significantly influences the problem definition and assessment results, and that using different knowledge systems provides useful insights that might otherwise be missed. Local communities are not mere spectators, but active managers of the ecosystems capacity to deliver services.

Key words: ecosystems, services, scale, communities