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 meeting of GEO-7, the Ad hoc Open Ended Meeting of the Assessment Procedures and Supporting Functions of the Global Environment Outlook Meeting. This virtual 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. These experts met to review and adopt the assessment procedures document for GEO. Like other major assessments such as the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), assessment procedures are vital in ensuring scientific integrity, legitimacy and credibility of scientific reports and the GEO is no different in this regard.
The second ad hoc open ended meeting of the seventh Global Environment Outlook was held on 17-20 October 2022 in a hybrid format. Experts met to review and adopt 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.
Meeting officials for the open-ended meetings of GEO-7 were elected on a no abjection basis. They are as below.
- Dr. Thuraya Al Sariri (Co-chair) - Assistant Director General of Nature Conservation at MECA- Oman
- Mr. Lorenzo Ciccarese (Co-chair) - Research Director at ISPRA – Italy’s Higher Institute for Environmental Protection and Research
- Mr. Miroslav Havránek (vice-chair) - Director of Czech Environmental Information Agency
- Mr. Alberto Santos Capra (vice-chair) - Secretariat of Environmental Policy in Natural Resources (SPARN), Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development of the Nation, Republic of Argentina.
- Ms. Anna Mampye (Rapporteur). - Director, State of Environment information Republic of South Africa
GEO-7 will have two main advisory bodies that will provide advice to GEO-7 process and UNEP’s Executive Director on matters related to GEO. These two bodies, the Intergovernmental and Multi-stakeholder Advisory Group (IMAG) and Multidisciplinary Expert Scientific Advisory Group (MESAG) were well defined during the procedures meeting with MESAG focusing on scientific credibility issues, and the IMAG focusing on the policy relevance issues.
The IMAG membership includes 25 Member States experts (5 per UN region) and 10 representatives from Major Groups and Stakeholders. The members have been carefully selected taking into account gender, geographic and disciplinary balance. Membership of the IMAG can be found here.
The MESAG will comprise 25 to 30 members that will be selected by the Executive Director, with the advice of the Intergovernmental and Multi-stakeholder Advisory Group. Nominees must be available to participate in the MESAG for the entire period of the preparation and finalization of the seventh edition of the Global Environment Outlook and its accompanying Summary for Policymakers, likely until mid-2025. Nominations should be submitted by 15 December, 2022 at the latest, through the following portal: https://wesr.unep.org/form/geo-nomination-portal
