Welcome to the first authors’ meeting on the seventh Global Environment Outlook, or GEO7. My thanks to everyone, particularly the new authors, for your time and commitment. I hope that you will find this a rewarding experience, and that your expertise illuminates UNEP’s flagship environmental assessment.
The aim is to create a very different type of GEO from those that came before. Look, we all know the planet is in crisis – because science, including previous GEOs, has told us in exhaustive detail. We know that the triple planetary crisis – the crisis of climate change, of nature and biodiversity loss, and pollution and waste – is threatening to sweep humanity backwards. What we need to do now is lay out exactly how to reverse this tide so that we can surge forwards into a world of equity and prosperity.
So certainly, while we will be providing an outlook, we are looking more for a blueprint for change. We are looking for solutions – zooming in on energy, food, and waste systems.
The world already knows many of the solutions to the challenges facing the planet and humanity. Renewables, energy efficiency, ecosystem restoration, food system reform and much more. Solutions that can be quickly implemented to build resilience to climate change. Solutions that can kick-start the long-term system transformations that will wash us up on the shores of a net-zero, nature-positive, resilient world.
Yet, to be honest, we haven’t put these solutions into practice at a meaningful scale and speed. So, while this GEO should focus on solutions – be they obvious quick wins, or long-term innovations – I also ask you to consider why we have not made progress we should have made. To look at the barriers to transformation. To figure out how to tear them down.
We also want this GEO to be the most diverse and inclusive to date. The world belongs to everybody. What works in one place may not work in another. So, I ask you to cast your net wide. Scour your networks and reach beyond them. Seek out traditional knowledge systems. Listen to bright, new voices. The only ideas we should be dismissing are those that do not work.
As I said at the scoping meeting, diversity allows us to gather ideas and deliver solutions that work with nature, not against it. If we build a truly broad coalition, we will have a far greater chance of delivering solutions that work and are implementable.
So, over to you. Identify the best science and solutions, new and old. Pinpoint how to remove the obstacles to put these solutions in place. Identify the best policies, technologies, and behavioural solutions. If you do this, you can guide the world to reducing emissions, protecting nature, reducing energy poverty, delivering plentiful and nutritious food and increasing human health.
And you can secure a legacy as a group of thought leaders who helped to give us all a better future.
