The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) developed by the UN aim by 2015 to improve human well-being (HWB) by reducing poverty, hunger, child and maternal mortality, ensuring education for all, controlling and managing diseases, tackling gender disparity, ensuring sustainable development and pursuing global partnerships. The 2005 publication of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) was an international effort to assemble the best scientific expertise on environmental issues. The MA underscores the importance of the environment for income generation, gender equality, health, nutrition, and many other dimensions of human well-being and thus has complimentary and direct linkages to achieving the MDGs. The MA used an analytical framework, focusing on ecosystem services, that link soils and the environment to human well-being. Ecosystem services are categorized by supporting, provisioning, regulating and cultural services. Soils are a critical basis for much of the MA findings. The biodiversity of soil provides many services that are important to human well-being. The MA helps us understand how changes to the environment, including soils and their soil biodiversity, affect ecosystem services that in turn influence human well-being. The MA puts a definitive end to the perception that development objectives are inherently at odds with environmental objectives. The MA suggests that the 2015 MDG targets are more likely to be achieved if the MDGs are addressed simultaneously and identifies which goals are directly or indirectly dependent on supporting, provisioning, regulating, and cultural services. The MA shows that ecosystem services can only be sustained in the long term if the integrity and completeness of ecosystems are maintained or restored. This information and the tools for improved management of ecosystems if integrated more systematically into development strategies, such as poverty and hunger reduction strategies at local, regional and global levels, can help achieve the goals of the MDG. The case for action to improve the management of the environment has never been stronger, nor has the link between development and the environment ever been clearer.