Covid 19 My field of interest

The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment

Many assessments of global environmental change have been produced since the 1980s. Those assessments have painted a consistently negative picture of the state of the global environment and of the impacts of human activities. The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, published in 2005, reported that, over the previous 50 years, humans have changed ecosystems more rapidly and extensively than in any comparable period of time. This rapid environmental change has been wrought primarily to meet rapidly growing human demands for food, fresh water, timber, construction materials and fuel. The pace and magnitude of human impacts have resulted in a substantial and largely irreversible loss in the diversity of life on Earth. In addition, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment found that approximately 60% of the ecosystem services it examined were being degraded or used unsustainably - including fresh water, capture fisheries, air and water purification, and the regulation of regional and local climate, natural hazards and pests.