Agriculture Reference
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business plans and market opportunities as part of a U.N. Environmental Program and
European Commission and a multicountry initiative called The Economics of Ecosystems
and Biodiversity (TEEB) (ten Brink, 2011). The JRC had a working group on soil biodiversity
that helped inform science and policy in Europe by contributing through the CBD on areas
such as protecting soil biodiversity, examining the taxonomy and roles soil organisms play
in ecosystem function, and building databases on soil biodiversity. This acknowledgment
of soil biodiversity as a critical component of all terrestrial ecosystems is a major step in
addressing knowledge gaps and promoting syntheses, inventories, monitoring, and man-
agement (Decaëns et al., 2006).
The international assessment and resulting synthesis report of the Millennium Ecosystem
Assessment (MA, 2005) on the status of the world's ecosystems concluded that Earth's
biodiversity was being significantly degraded by human activities at a pace that affected
the ability of ecosystems to continue to provide essential services for life support. In the
analysis, soils and their biodiversity were considered as a component of ecosystems that
provide essential services to society. This report, requested by governments through four
international environmental conventions (including the CBD and UNCCD), involved over
1,000 scientists and took 5 years to complete. The framework went beyond more commonly
used terms in environmental economics (ecosystem goods and services) to include all the
ways that people benefit from ecosystems: Twenty-four ecosystem services were analyzed
to measure the life support systems or natural capital of ecosystems. The MA framework
stimulated use of the concepts of ecosystem services by teachers, conventions, nongovern-
mental organizations (NGOs), businesses, and policy makers, for example, for meeting the
U.N. Millennium Development Goals (Wall et al., 2005), and resulted in new research and
studies, including a detailed analysis of how services provided by soil biodiversity differ
across managed and unmanaged ecosystems (van der Putten et al., 2004; Wardle, Brown,
et al., 2004). The MA conclusions on the status of the world's ecosystems and the wider
realization that direct (e.g., the application of fertilizers) and indirect (population, technol-
ogy, lifestyle) changes in biodiversity affect the ability of ecosystems to provide services,
which in turn modify food, water, air, overall human well-being, and national economies,
were a wake-up call. That ecosystems are degrading rapidly and urgently need protecting
for future generations continues to accelerate new interdisciplinary knowledge and analy-
ses of sustainability science (Carpenter et al., 2009; Raudsepp-Hearne et al., 2010).
10.2.5 The U.N. Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform
on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services
The newest body, the U.N. Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and
Ecosystem Services (IPBES), aims to ensure that policy decisions are made on the best
available scientific information for conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity and
ecosystem services. The need for information that is accurate and objective has grown
partly as a result of the MA (Perrings et al., 2011). Soil biodiversity and ecosystem services
are key to managing ecosystem sustainability. Syntheses to contribute to the IPBES and
other policy frameworks for land management could draw on measures such as those
used by van der Putten et al. (2004) and Wardle, Brown, et al. (2004) to quantify the relative
importance of soil organisms for each ecosystem service across a number of ecosystems.
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