Selection 12 - Ecosystems and Human Well-being

People all over depend on earth's ecosystems. They provide food, water, disease mangement, climate, and much more. Over the past 50 years humans have changed these ecosystems not always for the better.  There are 3 major problems with out ecosystems.  First, approximately 60% of ecosystem services examined by the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment group were being degraded or used in an unstainable way. Second, there was evidence that changes to the ecosystem were not for the well being of humans, and third, the degradation of the ecosystem are being layed on the poor and its not fair. There is no simple fix for these problems. The most significant changes have been due to our needs for food and water, these changes have helped for the better and reduced malnourished people and ahve improved human health. There are some aspects of the ecosystem that we are trying to organize so they are better looked after, for example agriculture, fisheries aquaculture and also water and forestry.
Overall the ecosystems have alot of problems we are trying to fix, but also alot of those problems come in handy sometimes, and help us feed the hungry. We are trying to figure out how to make plans and keep things growing and safe, and hopefully we accomplish that.