Outcome of the Final Global Author’s Meeting

The highly anticipated and final author’s meeting of the sixth edition of the Global Environment Outlook was held at the Regent Four Seasons Hotel in Singapore from 19-23 February 2018. The meeting was co-organized by the Ministry of Environment and Water Resources of Singapore and UN Environment. The meeting covered a full five days, with opening ceremonies, an outreach event and planning meetings for authors and fellows on the first day and an Outlooks visioning workshop and a field trip on the third day. 

The meeting was attended by the following groups;

• Co-chairs and Vice co-chairs
• Authors
• Fellows
• High-Level Group
• Scientific Advisory Panel
• Co-chair of the Assessment Methodologies, Data and Information Working Group (AMG)
• Lead Review Editors

Authors, fellows, co-chairs and vice-chairs met in Singapore to advance the drafting of several elements of the sixth Global Environment Outlook, which included:

• Drafting of the Summary for Policy Makers and the Technical Summary: A zero-order draft of the technical summary and early draft of the summary for policymakers was produced by a small author team working with the co-chairs and vice-chairs. The drafts are currently being worked on to improve the key findings and messages, ensuring alignment with the main report and attributing confidence to each finding, to improve the understanding of policymakers who will eventually read the Technical Summary and the Summary for Policy Makers.
• Addressing questions of coherence across the document: Authors met with the co-chairs and vice chairs to identify the areas where coherence needs to be improved in the document. A strategy of using the draft Technical Summary to identify these areas of incoherence enabled progress to be made to better align the chapters and key messages and still needs further work to provide more substantive recommendations.
• Moving the Policy Effectiveness chapters towards second order draft quality: Policy authors worked diligently to improve the referencing as well as the assessment of the effectiveness of the case studies, the policy analysis component and the indicators analysis considering the health, economy and equity aspects. The cross-cutting chapter was redesigned to better focus on systemic policy approaches and the possibilities for transformative change using policy approaches.  A different approach was proposed for tracking progress towards internationally agreed environmental goals.  UN Environment will produce a traffic light dashboard for an array of different indicators rather than relying on the three policy sensitive indicators selected in the thematic chapters.
• Moving the Outlooks chapters towards second order draft quality: Outlooks authors worked extensively to advance the scenarios and ‘seeds of change’ chapters towards their second order drafts.  The outline for the Summary for Policy Makers received from the High-level Group provided guidance on the main themes that could be focused on in the Outlooks chapters. These themes could include: the need for urgent and sustained action to achieve environmental goals, a focus on systemic transformation is likely needed to make progress towards these goals more quickly, and finally, there are significant benefits of using this more transformative approach. The Outlooks authors are likely to deliver an early second-order draft for the technical review beginning April 11, 2018.  A request will be made to reviewers to assist in advancing the document towards a cleaner second-order draft. Two meetings will possibly be organized (budget permitting) to help the Outlooks authors address the review comments from the technical and intergovernmental reviews in a more targeted fashion. Important discussions were held to more actively integrate human health into the scenarios and outlooks work.  Health authors are requested to assist with data and text to move this forward.
• Gathering more data for the innovative Outlooks component with a stakeholder workshop: A fourth outlooks visioning workshop was held on Feb. 21, 2018 with cities focus.  Participants in the workshop included: local Singapore stakeholders, authors of the Global Environment Outlook for Youth, Asia-Pacific and selected experts from the author teams. A paper is planned to be published on the technical results and findings of the outlooks visioning work so that these findings from the workshops can be used in the assessment process.
• Advancing the drafting of the cross-cutting issues and 'common threads' throughout the assessment: Cross-cutting and Common Thread Lead Authors worked to create text which could be added to the existing chapters.  The focus was primarily on inserting text into the Policy chapters. Significant text was drafted for the economic dimension and equity dimension common thread and efforts are being made to present this material for integration into the chapters. The importance of the cross-cutting issues and common threads to the systemic transformation narrative has emerged as a critically important issue to address for the April 11^th review draft.
• Conducting the fourth High-Level Panel Discussion as a core activity in the broader Global Environment Outlook outreach strategy: The High-Level Panel Discussion focused on Climate actions in cities, creating a livable environment for people, and examined the role of science, policy and business in creating a better global future. The discussion also focused on concrete case  studies from Singapore and from cities around the world. The panel also considered key cross-cutting issues such as the economic and equity dimension and the effects of the environment on health.
• Conducting a side event on the Global Environment Outlook derivative products Global environment outlook for cities: the global environment outlook for Cities is one of the main derivate products of Global Environment Outlook specifically targeting the needs and the potential of cities in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The fundamental objective of the Global Environment Outlook for Cities is to: (a) promote a better understanding of the interaction between urban development and the environment; (b) providing reliable and up-to-date information to the region’s local governments, scientists, policy-makers and key stakeholders; and (c) help them improve urban-environmental knowledge base planning and management. The Global Environment Outlook for Cities assessments provide information on the state of the environment, the main factors for change, and the policies affecting the environment, their effectiveness as well as emerging themes. For this new edition, it is envisaged to develop a more dynamic and interactive product compared to the previous editions. The main idea is to build on existing networks and attract more key players, especially from developing countries to create sustainable pathways within the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) framework.

The technical review of the full sixth edition of the Global Environment Outlook will begin on April 16, 2018, which means all chapters must be delivered to the Secretariat in second-order draft form by April 11, 2018. The review comments will need to be addressed between May 15 and June 15, 2018, by the authors.  Efforts are being made with the Review Editors to improve the efficiency and accuracy of the process of addressing review comments. A Science Editor will also be engaged to review the chapters from April 15 to June 15 to tighten up the narrative, propose improvements to the quality of the science and eliminate duplication in the document. The intergovernmental review is intended to begin on June 15, 2018, until August 15, 2018. The review comments from this intergovernmental review will need to be addressed between August 15 and September 15, 2018. The drafting meeting for the second-order draft of the Summary for Policy Makers will happen from September 24-27, 2018 in Mexico.  Further information will be made available as it becomes available.  Co-chairs, vice-chairs and coordinating lead authors were requested to keep these dates open for participation in the meeting. Authors will have until October 30, 2018, to fine tune their text and work with the copy editor on their chapters in preparation for the Secretariat's document production exercise. An embargoed copy of the final document will be available for the Member States by the week of December 5, 2018.