Co-sponsored by the China Ministry of Science and Technology and State Environmental Protection Administration, a joint event to showcase the results derived from the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) and the Integrated Ecosystem Assessment of West China (MAWEC) was recently held in Beijing.

The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment is a four-year international cooperation project. Since announced for a start by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan on June 2001, some 1,300 scientists from 95 countries have become part of the project. Aiming at a multi-scaled comprehensive assessment of worldwide ecosystems and associated implications on human welfare, the project strives to provide reliable information on earth ecosystem changes for government decision makers.

The Chinese government vigorously supports MA, and kicked off the Integrated Ecosystem Assessment of West China (MAWEC) on June 2001, making it one of the cases investigated under sub-global ecosystem assessment efforts. MAWEC, under the international millennium ecosystem assessment framework, works on comprehensive assessment of the current status, evolutions, and future perspectives of ecosystems and associated service functions in west China, using system simulations and geoinformatics. Assessment results show that, in the past 2 decades, China's west ecosystem has seen an increased diversity, making itself a major carbon sink. However, under the dual impacts of climate change and human activities, west China deplores for a sustained decrease of its firn area, and an ascended desertification area, with degraded ecosystems, though at different levels. The entire west region, in the context of ecosystem bearing capacity as a whole, leaves a limited potential for bearing capacity, though some parts have warned overloading.