The Third Global Authors Meeting of the Sixth Global Environment Outlook (GEO-6)

The Third Global Authors Meeting of the Sixth Global Environment Outlook (GEO-6) was held at the Nansha Grand Hotel in Guangzhou, China from  9 -14 October 2017. Nansha Grand Hotel is located in the picturesque Guangzhou Nansha New Coastal City and has one of the most stunning sea-view restaurants in Nansha. The meeting was co-organised by UN Environment and the China Southern (Nansha) International Cooperation Southern Centre with the support of the Ministry of Environmental Protection of the People’s Republic of China.

The Opening sessions and introductory remarks were delivered by (Representative from the Government of China, Representative from the City of Guangzhou, Ms. Dechen Tsering, Regional Director and UN Environment Representive for Asia and the Pacific, Prof. Jian Liu, Chief Scientist, UN Environment, Prof. Paul Ekins and Prof. Joyeeta Gupta, Co-chairs of the sixth Global Environment Outlook) on October 9, 2017.

Five main groups  participated in the meeting, including:

• Authors and experts for the State of the Environment, Policy Effectiveness and Outlooks sections of the report;
• The High-level Intergovernmental and Stakeholder Advisory Group
• The Scientific Advisory Panel, 
• The Assessment Methodologies, Data and Information Working Group, and
• A group of 20 Review Editors.

With so many groups participating, the meeting had several key objectives:

• Address all comments received from the second order draft review of the State of the Environment chapters, and ensure the review editors are satisfied with the process.
• Move the Policy Effectiveness chapters towards first order draft quality.
• Conduct an expert elicitation exercise to assess the effectiveness of several policy case studies.
• Move the Outlooks chapters towards first order draft quality 
• Gather more data for the innovative Outlooks component of the report by holding a second ‘game-changers’ workshop.
• Advance the drafting of the economic and equity dimension 'common threads' throughout the report.
• Ensure the procedure for the preparation of the Summary for Policy Makers is adopted by the High-level Group and the Scientific Advisory Panel.
• Develop a draft structure for the Summary for Policy Makers.
• Participate in a field trip, policy dialogue and outreach activities with local organizers.