Discussing global environmental assessments and progress on GEO-7
Global environmental assessments identify, assess, and synthesize the state of knowledge and evidence base on multiple aspects of our rapidly changing environment.
They play a critical role in informing decision-making by reviewing large bodies of scientific literature, identifying gaps in understanding, assessing levels of confidence in the underlying science, and examining the evidence behind key debates.
The assessments of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are perhaps the most well-known global environmental assessments, but they are by no means the only one. Since the 1990s, for example, the United Nations Environment Programme has published the Global Environmental Outlook (GEO), assessing the state and trends in the global environment. Six GEOs have been published since 1997, the last one in 2019, and have documented the steadily worsening state of the global environment, emphasizing the need for transformative change to address the magnitude of the challenges faced. As UNEPs flagship environment assessment, the reports seek to provide the tools and knowledge to develop effective, sustainable, and equitable policies. Findings and recommendations are presented to the United Nations Environment Assembly, UNEPs highest-level global decision-making body.
Creating the GEO-7 report
In March 2022, the process to create the GEO-7 report began. The report has been tasked to build upon previous GEOs by not only examining the state and trends in the global environment, but also provide guidance on the transformational changes needed to tackle the key environmental challenges facing humanity, and the possible environmental and socio-economic consequences of these changes. Bringing together over 200 authors from across the globe, the GEO-7 assessment is the most ambitious GEO to date, unparalleled in scope, size, and importance, covering issues as diverse as climate change, to air pollution to waste management. For the first time, the assessment has an explicit goal of including perspectives and knowledge of Indigenous peoples and local communities alongside science.
One of the key bodies guiding the production of GEO-7 is the Multidisciplinary Expert Scientific Advisory Group (MESAG), a 30-member group of scientists from academia and government tasked with ensuring the scientific credibility of the assessment and providing guidance to UNEP’s Executive Director and authors on the GEO process. I was nominated by the UK government to join the MESAG and took up this role 2 years ago. My contributions to the MESAG involve providing expertise in community-based research, climate change adaptation, and working with Indigenous knowledge systems. Most of our work is virtual but we have met twice as a group at the lead author meetings, the last of which was in Nairobi in early September, where we had a chance to meet with the authors of each chapter and the co-chairs for the whole assessment. Previously, I supported the launch of an Indigenous knowledge and local knowledge taskforce within the GEO-7, helping to co-develop a process to ensure such knowledge is ethically and appropriately engaged. The taskforce was developed during meetings in London and Vienna in the first year of the GEO-7 and is now actively involved in advising the chapters.
Across my career I have been involved in numerous environmental assessments, including those of the IPCC (e.g. 1.5CSR, SROCC, and AR6 WGII). GEO-7 is the first time, however, that I have been involved in an advisory capacity rather than as an author. As a MESAG member, our role is to advise on the process through which the assessment is conducted and, unlike having an author role, does not involve providing content. Our mandate is thus broad, ranging from ensuring the chapters receive enough reviews to underpin their credibility, to identifying areas where additional work is needed, to assessing the rigor behind how key statements in the assessment have been derived, to making sure that diverse voices are heard within the assessment. As we move towards 2025, our role will broaden to also include ensuring the credibility and rigour of the highly influential Summary for Policy Makers, which will summarise the key findings of GEO-7 and will be signed-off by member states in a line-by-line approval session in November 2025.
My experience on the MESAG has been a learning process and not without its challenges, but the opportunity to learn from other researchers from a diversity of backgrounds, disciplines, and career stages, has been a real bonus, along with providing unique insights on what goes on ‘behind the scenes’ of major environmental assessments. Being able to shape how the assessment engages with the perspectives of Indigenous peoples has been a real highlight, with both flexibility and support to do this is a meaningful way; we’re hoping the IPCC can learn a thing or two from this, particularly around the use of Dialogues to engage diverse ways of knowing and experiencing climate change. As we enter the final 12 months of the assessment, I am looking forward to participating as an observer in an Dialogue session with Indigenous peoples representatives that will be held in Thailand, with a final meeting in June where the MESAG will report on its evaluation on the rigour and credibility of the process through which GEO-7 has been created.
By Professor James Ford, Priestley Chair in Climate Adaptation