ABSTRACT
The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA) 2005 has brought about a fundamental change in the way that scientists perceive the role and value of biodiversity. While the arguments to support biodiversity conservation hitherto relied on its intrinsic, use and non-use values, the MEA broadened its scope by emphasizing the importance of biodiversity as a source of ecosystem services, and for human well-being. By identifying the role of biodiversity in the provision of services with demonstrable value to people, it has broadened the range of motivations for conservation, and has established an obligation to identify the consequences of change in biodiversity to the well-being of people (Kinzig et al, 2007). Justifying conservation no longer relies solely on the notion of biodiversity for biodiversity’s sake, or the spiritual or ethical consideration of a right of species to exist independent of their use by people (sometimes referred to as ‘intrinsic value’). While this remains an important motivation for conservation it significantly underestimates the value of biodiversity, and is one reason why it has been difficult to secure even the minimum level of protection needed to stem the accelerating wave of species extinctions (Kinzig et al, 2007). The MEA recognizes the dynamics and linkages between people, biodiversity and ecosystems. Human activities have direct and indirect impacts on biodiversity and ecosystems, which in turn affects the ecosystem services they provide, and ultimately impacts on human well-being. The MEA, however, also notes that many other factors, independent of changes in biodiversity and ecosystems, affect human conditions and that biodiversity and ecosystems are also influenced by many natural factors that are not associated with humans (MEA, 2005). While people and human well-being are the pivot around which the MEA revolves, it does acknowledge that biodiversity and ecosystems also have intrinsic value – value of something in and for itself, irrespective of its utility for someone else – and that people make decisions concerning ecosystems based on consideration of their own well-being and that of others as well as on intrinsic value (MEA, 2005).
