As requested by Member States in Resolution EA.5/3, UNEP initiated the preparation of the seventh edition of the Global Environment Outlook (GEO-7) assessment and its accompanying Summary for Policymakers, to be launched at UNEA-7. In line with this mandate, UNEPs Secretariat set out to seek nominations of a broad range of expertise, ranging from natural sciences to policy, economics, and social sciences, as well as expertise in outlooks and scenarios, for this ambitious endeavor.
The Secretariat therefore reached out to a broad range of networks internally and externally to ensure a gender and geographically balanced selection and received over 700 nominations from interested Experts, Member States and Stakeholders. The selected authors will participate in the First Global Author’s Meeting of GEO-7 which will take place from 13 to 17 March in Bangkok, Thailand. The objective of the authors’ meeting is to expand the annotated outline and agree the drafting process of different chapters.
The Secretariat also issued a call for expressions of interest from collaborating centers to provide support to the GEO-7. Over 40 interested institutions and organizations expressed an interest to participate as collaborating centers to support the GEO-7 process.
The Environment Assembly also requested the Executive Director, with guidance from the Intergovernmental and Multi stakeholder Advisory Group (IMAG), to establish The Multidisciplinary Expert Scientific Advisory Group (MESAG). In line with this mandate, the MESAG nomination process opened on 1 December 2022 and was closed on 15 December 2022. The Secretariat, with support from the IMAG, worked on the group's constitution, and the MESAG was established in January 2023. A total of 179 nominations were received by Member States, Stakeholders, and the Expert Group. The members were carefully selected considering gender (16 Male, 16 Female), geographic and disciplinary balance. The first face to face meeting of the MESAG will take place on the 14-16 March in Bangkok, Thailand where the members will meet to discuss various objectives of the work and provide advice to the GEO-7 process. The IMAG members will have their second face to face meeting in Bangkok, Thailand to discuss various objectives regarding the GEO-7 process and the next steps.
In order for GEO-7 to provide an integrated and holistic environmental assessment of pathways to address the triple planetary crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution UNEP is planning the “Modelling and Scenarios and Solutions Pathways Methodology Workshops” scheduled for 8 to 10 March 2023 in Bangkok, Thailand. The overall objective of the two workshops is to develop a shared understanding of the objectives of the policy and outlooks chapters of GEO-7.
Resources
