Impacts of pollution on ecosystem services for the Millennium Development Goals
This report has examined three stress factors that have the potential to decrease the supply of ecosystem services, thus reducing the chances of reaching the Millennium Development Goal 1 (MDG 1) in a sustainable way. Air pollution, energy generation and indiscriminate use of pesticides may affect provisioning, regulating, supporting and cultural ecosystem services. Ecosystem services like crop production, collection of wild food and biomass, climate regulation, nutrient cycling, pollination and disease and pest regulation are all vital to a sustainable MDG attainment. In view of the poor advances towards reducing poverty and hunger, it is clear that the margin for negative impacts on ecosystem service supplies is very small.