People
- The Board of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment represented the users and audiences for the findings of the MA and helped ensure that the MA produced information and built capacity needed by the users of the Assessment at local, national, regional, and global scales. The Board also appointed the Director and the Chairs of the Assessment Panel and Working Groups, approved the budget and workplan, selected the institutions that provided administrative support, and received and approved the findings of the Assessment. The Board was comprised of individuals representing key partner institutions, and other individuals selected in their personal capacity as representatives of government, scientific communities, civil society organizations and the private sector.
- The Assessment Panel directed the scientific process of the assessment, and was comprised of the co-chairs of each working group, three at-large members, and the Panel Co-Chairs. The members were appointed by the Board, and as the Panel directed the assessment itself, its members were selected to reflect the desire for diversity in the MA: balance between North/South, natural and social sciences, and gender.
- The MA Secretariat was composed of staff from six different institutions and provided core administrative, logistical, and technical support to the working groups and committees that were involved in the assessment. UNEP administered the grants from the Global Environment Facility, United Nations Foundation, and World Bank and employed the MA Director, located at the WorldFish Center in Malaysia. The World Fish Center also hosted the coordinators for the Sub-global Working Group. The UNEP-World Conservation Monitoring Centre supported the Condition and Trends Working Group, and the ICSU Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment (SCOPE) supported the Scenarios Working Group. The Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi, supported the Responses Working Group, along with the National Institute of Public Health and the Environment (RIVM), Netherlands, until 2004. The World Resources Institute in partnership with the Meridian Institute coordinated Engagement and Outreach and internal MA meetings. The World Resources Institute also served as the Interim Secretariat for the Millennium Assessment from October 1999 – January 2002.
- Authors and Reviewers. More than 1360 authors from 95 countries were involved in the MA, organized into 4 working groups. The MA’s four technical volumes underwent two rounds of review by experts and governments. Together with 44 governments and 9 affiliated scientific organizations, over 600 individual reviewers worldwide provided around 18,000 individual comments. The review process was overseen by an independent Board of Review Editors, composed of Chapter Review Editors who ensured that all review comments were adequately handled and responded to by MA authors.
- The concept of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment was developed in 1998 and 1999 by the members of an Exploratory Steering Committee assembled at the invitation of World Resources Institute, United Nations Environment Programme, United Nations Development Programme, and the World Bank. The Exploratory Steering Committee ended its work when the formal MA Board was appointed in 2000.
- Donors and in-Kind Contributors. The overall MA budget was approximately US$24 million. Of this amount, around $7 million was provided through in-kind contributions for the MA sub-global assessments.
|
|