Ecosystem management

Scientific evidence shows that ecosystems are under unprecedented pressure, threatening prospects for sustainable development. While the challenges are daunting, they also provide opportunities for local communities, business and government to innovate for the benefit of communities, economies and the global environment. However, in order to secure the environmental conditions for prosperity, stability and equity, timely responses that are proportionate to the scale of the environmental challenges will be required. In creating such responses, governments, the international community, the private sector, civil society and the general public all have an important role to play. As the environmental program of the United Nations, UNEP is working to articulate, facilitate and support appropriate responses. Management should maintain or improve ecosystems; and ecosystems should provide a range of goods and services to current and future generations. Regulating internal ecosystem structure and function, plus inputs and outputs, to achieve socially desirable conditions. The strategy, which, in aggregate, maintains the full array of forest values and functions at the landscape level. A resource management system designed to maintain or enhance ecosystem health and productivity while producing essential commodities and other values to meet human needs and desires within the limits of socially, biologically and economically acceptable risk. Integrating scientific knowledge of ecological relationships within a complex sociopolitical and values framework toward the general goal of protecting native ecosystem integrity over the long term. Management driven by explicit goals, executed by policies, protocols, and practices, and made adaptable by monitoring and research based on our best understanding of the ecological interactions and processes necessary to sustain ecosystem structure and function.