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Figure 15 Example of impacts on ecosystem services due a change in lake water Module
5
quality

Abu Dhabi, UAE

When the environmental factors change, for whatever reason, the individuals, communities and even
economic sectors that depend on these factors are also affected in myriad ways. Depending on the
environmental stress involved, the relative importance of impacts through changes in ecosystem services,
non-ecosystem environmental assets or risks and hazards may change. In our previous example of
water quality, several impact pathways could have been identified using the ecosystem services and
human well-being framework (Figure 16).

For example, oil natural gas is an asset with no direct ecosystem value in the sense that oil and
natural gas reserves without human intervention tend to be deep underground and not playing a
role in ecological cycles. This role changes if and when oil and gas reserves are exploited for human
use. Once brought to the surface and utilized, oil and natural gas creates both socio-economic

dependencies and ecological imports. If availability of oil and gas is reduced or a decline of oil
prices occures, human well-being is affected through functioning of socio-economic structures that
rely on oil and natural gas as an energy resource and major source of income in some countries
such as the GCC, Iraq and Libya where oil and gas representing about 40 per cent of GDP and 70
per cent of government revenues (UN-ESCWA and API 2002). If the national revenue or income
have little immediate flexibility to shift to alternative source of income. This is illustrated by the
degree of political concerns related to the diversify the economy in the GCC countries scince
1990s (Abahussain et al., 2009).

IEA Training Manual Workshop for the National Reporting Toolkit (NRT) 57