Following a very successful UN Environment Assembly, the resolution on the future of the Global Environment Outlook (GEO) was approved by Member States on March 2, 2022 and GEO-7 preparations are in full swing after the inaugural meetings of GEO-7, the Ad hoc Open Ended Meeting of the Assessment Procedures and Supporting Functions of the Global Environment Outlook Meeting and the second ad hoc open ended meeting of the seventh Global Environment Outlook. This procedures meeting was held on 19-22 September 2022 and was attended by the experts nominated by Member States and UNEP accredited stakeholders for the ad hoc open-ended meetings of the seventh Global Environment Outlook. More on this meeting can be found here.
The second ad hoc open ended meeting of the seventh Global Environment Outlook was held on 17-20 October 2022 in a hybrid format. This meeting reviewed and adopted the draft scoping document of GEO-7. The meeting also convened expert dialogues on food, energy and waste systems which were identified in GEO-6 as requiring transformation.
The outcomes of these two meetings were reported at a side event titled, Progress and Outcomes of Global Environment Outlook (GEO-7) Inaugural Meetings hosted by the 9th Annual Subcommittee Meeting of UNEP's Committee of Permanent Representatives. More on this side event can be found here.
GEO-7 proposes to build on key findings from GEO-6 and those of other major assessments which are.
- Current policies cannot keep pace with the rate of environmental degradation we face today.
- With current policies none of the environmental SDGs will be achieved and none of the main internationally agreed environmental goals (e.g. Paris Agreement, Aichi Targets, etc.) will be achieved.
- Because of this we face a triple planetary crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution.
- Policies which address the systems that are the root cause of environmental degradation should contribute to the transformational change needed to achieve an environmentally sustainable world by 2050.
- The transformation of three interdependent systems, energy, food and waste, as well as their supporting economic and financial systems, are critical in this timeframe.
- By transforming these systems, we should contribute significantly to creating a world with a stable climate, that is nature rich (biodiverse) and which produces near-zero-waste (circular) for current and future generations.
GEO-7 will also continue to assess the state and trends on the global environment, the implications for human well-being and the achievement of the SDGs, as well as providing an outlook that provides useful guidance on the possible environmental and socio-economic implications of the transformational changes needed. This will ensure continuity with previous GEOs and allow GEO-7 to provide some updates on the environmental impact of the global pandemic and recent disasters and conflicts. For the outlook, GEO-7 may be able to provide modelling and scenarios analysis of the socio-economic impacts (both positive and negative) of different solutions pathways. This additional analysis will provide additional rationale for Member States to implement the proposed solutions pathways.
