Political Adviser Jo Stein Moen, The Minstry of Environment

Opening address at the First meeting in the Board of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA) in Trondheim, 17`th of July 2000

Dear members of the Board of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment!

On behalf of the Norwegian Government I have the great honour and privilege to welcome you to Norway for your first official meeting. And it’s a special honour for me to have your meeting here in Trondheim, where we have tried, through the Trondheim Conferences on Biodiversity, to contribute to the development of a sound scientific knowledge base for international environmental cooperation. We have had the pleasure to cooperate with UNEP and other key players on the global environmental arena on these occasions, and I am pleased to see that many of these organisations are represented on the board. This broad participation and horizontal cooperation among the central organisations and institutions is one of the key factors for success in such an ambitious effort you are about to embark upon.

In the Earth Day special edition of Time-magazine from April this year, we have read about the rather gloomy picture that is being painted by the Pilot Analysis of Global Ecosystems, PAGE, done by World Resources Institute, but as I understand, with many of you being actively involved through the Steering Committee. We are looking forward to the full presentation of PAGE at our Ministerial Conference in Norway (Bergen) in September, both with anticipation and a bit of fearful respect.

As a politician I appreciate fully the need for a solid knowledge base regarding the state of our nature systems. I also realize the imperative of having sound and well-functioning ecosystems that can produce all the goods and services necessary for securing a sustainable development. But in addition to a good "state-of-the-art" description, we also need some indications of how to improve the situation, and how to avoid further deterioration of the ecosystems in the future. We need to know the negative driving forces, how they relate to the nature situation and how we as politicians can find new and better solutions for nature management.

This is a great challenge also for the MEA. Will it be applied ? How can it really be of practical help for decision makers at the local, national and global level ?

I feel that the new paradigm of ecosystem approach as the adopted management philosophy under the Biodiversity Convention, is an essential improvement in how we address the nature management challenges in the future. I have understood that the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment is also based on very much the same way of thinking: To see and practise nature management in a social economic context, where all stakeholders can feel that "there is something in it for them", when it comes to the continued safeguarding of nature’s ability to produce goods and services for everybody.

Since 1987, when the Bruntland Commission presented "Our common future", we have seen the evolution of a number of new conventions and agreements to deal with various environmental problems. Many new secretariats have been established and the various "Conference of the parties"-processes are on their way. This is fine, but it is the well-functioning of the same ecosystems that all of them are trying to safeguard. This calls for horizontal cooperation and coordination of effort. The MEA is an excellent example of such a coordinated effort. The Norwegian government has at the last two COP`s of the Biodiversity Convention proposed to develop a global assessment mechanism. I am convinced that MEA will demonstrate the need for and usefulness of such a mechanism.

At the turn of the millennium, which actually is at the end of this year, but which we have celebrated for some time now, the timing must be perfectly right for the nations of the world to evaluate the health of "Mother Nature". In his report to the UN Millennium Assembly later this year, Secretary General Kofi Annan, do actively advocate the MEA as "an outstanding example of the sort of international scientific and political cooperation that is needed to further the cause of sustainable development". The Norwegian government fully supports his words and will actively contribute to the success of MEA.

In addition to our support for this board meeting, we also plan to support one of the developing country national MEA`s that you plan to carry out as part of the whole effort. Senegal or Namibia has been mentioned as actual countries here. We also plan to carry out a national MEA ourselves, and some of the people that will be involved with this, have graciously been invited as observers to your meeting here. For the northern ecosystems we also have scientific institutions and knowledge that can contribute to the full assessment, for example GRID-Arendal and NINA (the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research).

Once again, I wish you wholeheartedly welcome to Trondheim, and good luck with your important work. Decision-makers all over the world are looking forward to your results.

Thank you very much!