With its “goods and services” focus, isn the Millennium Assessment overly anthropocentric? What about conservation of biodiversity in its own right?
Because biodiversity underlies all ecosystem goods and services, an assessment of the capacity of an ecosystem to provide food, clean water, fiber, storm protection and so forth necessarily must examine the status of the biodiversity of the system and the link between the biodiversity and the service involved. Moreover, as described in the draft design for the assessment, biodiversity would also be examined in its own right independently of its short-term or long-term role in maintaining other ecosystem goods and services. The “goods and services” framework has been suggested for the assessment for three reasons: (1) this is the most useful way to examine the sustainable use of biodiversity, one of the CBD’s three objectives; (2) this framework directly links the findings of the assessment to development needs of countries; and, (3) policymakers in other sectors, including Ministries of Planning or Finance, are more likely to consider the implications of the assessment (including the i
