ALTHOUGH it is the closest we have to a definitive planetary health check, nobody is claiming the Millennium Assessment is complete. In fact it is riddled with gaps and guesses where hard numbers are missing for many of the ecosystem changes that would ideally have been documented.
Despite the missing figures though, the conclusions are unassailable says MA director Walter Reid. For example, our understanding of land degradation around the world is “appallingly bad”, he says. “The numbers range from 10 per cent to 70 per cent of arid lands degraded. But even if it is as low as 10…
