Planet Earth, Year 2050

The authors of the world's most overlooked environmental study held a press briefing last week in Washington to discuss what life on the planet will be like in 2050. Their upbeat conclusion: fundamental changes, in practice and policy, can protect us from the worst consequences of overpopulation and climate change.

Good news -- if anybody pays attention.

While it may not be a verifiable fact that the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) is the world's most underappreciated eco-study, it's definitely the most unevenly appreciated one. When the huge report first emerged last spring after four years, $24 million and the efforts of more than 1,300 scientists in 95 countries, it made headlines elsewhere. In December it was awarded a Zayed Prize, something like an environmentalist Nobel. Here in the United States, though, the media barely registered its existence.

What a dirty shame. The U.N.-backed Millennium Assessment is the most thorough survey of global ecosystems ever undertaken. It's also the first report of its kind to link ecosystem health to human well-being, and in so doing strikes the rich, rich vein of human self-interest. Showing people what's in it for them is a great way to get something done.

At the press conference last Thursday, Walt Reid, who directed the study and now teaches at Stanford, restated the report's radical conclusions and issued a stern warning.

The report's basic premise is that healthy ecosystems provide humans with a range of "services" -- things like food, clean water, clean air, buffers from natural disasters and even spiritual renewal. To the extent that these "ecosystem services" are degraded, so is the quality of human life.

And without serious behavior modification, we're headed for a bad run, Reid said. "We've badly mismanaged our ecosystems," he said. "As long as we regard ecosystem services as free and limitless, we will continue to use them in a way that does not make sense."

Reid enumerated the main findings of the study he directed, which concluded that 60 percent of the planet's ecosystem services are being run down or used up faster than they can replenish themselves.

Poor people suffer most from such environmental degradation because their reliance on ecosystems is immediate. When a forest is wiped out, the people who relied on its animals and plants die. The Millennium Assessment amasses vast amounts of data demonstrating human suffering as a result of environmental destruction. And it predicts more pain to come as earth's swelling population pushes more ecosystems to their thresholds and toward extinctions and other "abrupt and irreversible" changes.

Last week's briefing focused on what governments can do to reverse these trends. Reid, along with Stephen Carpenter, zoology professor at University of Wisconsin, and Prabhu Pingali, an economist at the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, presented four scenarios for the year 2050 that represent distinct paths into the future. They are all disturbing.

All start out assuming a couple of basic facts in the next 45 years: a significantly higher population (up from 6 billion to 8.1 to 9.6 billion) with attendant demands for more food and water, and fallout from climate change, like severe storms and dwindling water supplies.

• The scenario dubbed "Global Orchestration" imagines a future in which global trade and economic liberalization have triumphed. Poverty has fallen and incomes have risen, leading to increased global consumption. Food and water needs are met, but at great cost: a lot of the so-called "regulating" ecosystem services -- erosion control, storm protection, water purification -- suffer. Species invasions and the release of environmental pathogens occur with greater frequency. Overall, though, the five basic indicators of human well-being (material well-being, health, security, social relations and freedom) improve.
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