A UK MA?

The UK Government has published its response to the Environmental Audit Committee’s report on the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. The EAC recommended that the UK conduct a national ecosystem assessment. However, the Government has said that:

We must take into account the risks of duplication of resources and opportunities for making use of existing assessment processes. There may prove to be value in a national assessment which pulls together existing initiatives for a more coherent approach to monitoring the status of and trends in ecosystem services, and predicting future impacts of drivers of change, but we would need to establish whether and how such an assessment would be useful to inform our policy and decision making in the future.

Would a national MA duplicate effort or enhance decision making?

For more on ecosystem services, read the recently published Parliamentary Office of Science and Technologies POSTnote on the topic.