Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Synthesis Reports available for review
Comments must be submitted by December 20, 2004
The Synthesis Reports of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment are now available for review. Any interested individual is welcome to submit review comments. Guidelines and a template for submitting comments are available here. Review comments should be submitted to by December 20, 2004.
The six MA synthesis reports focus on the needs specific user audiences, namely, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), Ramsar Wetlands Convention, business and industry, the health sector, and a general audience. (The CBD Synthesis will not be available for review until mid-December.) Each synthesis report is relatively short, and is based entirely on material found in the underlying technical assessment reports of the MA working groups.
The fourth and final full assessment report of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment - the Sub-global Working Group Assessment Report - is also currently available for review. The Sub-global report assesses lessons from approximately 20 sub-global assessments, addressing issues such as multi-scale methodologies, cross-scale interactions, and the incorporation of traditional and local knowledge into an assessment process.
The second review of the three global reports (Condition and Trends, Scenarios, and Responses) was completed last September, when more than 200 authors and review editors gathered in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to address the comments received. A total of 13,845 individual comments were received from 546 expert reviewers, 44 governments and 9 scientific organizations. MA authors are now working on the final versions of their chapters which will be finalized in March 2005.
Source: Communications Office, Millennium Ecosystem Assessment