On 9 December, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) released the "Global Environment Outlook 7 (GEO-7): A future we choose". A total of 10 researchers from the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES) contributed to this report as authors and members of the advisory group. While IGES has participated in drafting previous GEO reports, for this edition, IGES also served as a technical partner, providing technical support throughout the overall production process.
GEO consists of a series of reports that assess the state of the global environment based on the cooperation of experts worldwide, offering innovative policy response measures. In this GEO-7 edition, 287 multi-disciplinary scientists from 82 countries participated to assess the impact of multiple global environmental crises: climate change, biodiversity loss, land degradation and desertification, and pollution and waste.
The report points out that these interconnected crises, which are primarily caused by unsustainable systems of production and consumption, go beyond mere environmental issues. They are already causing social and economic damage, and undermining human health and well-being. Furthermore, the report suggests that by undertaking "whole-of-government and whole-of-society approaches" at scale and pace, it is possible to realise "transformative solution pathways”.
GEO-7 further emphasises the necessity of advancing system transformations simultaneously and integrally across five systems: economic and financial, energy, food, circular economy and environment. It also presents priority issues and policy responses tailored to the actual conditions of each region.
Additionally, IGES serves as a collaborating centre to disseminate key messages from the GEO series and is co-developing a "Science-Policy Seminar" programme with UNEP to help policymakers in various countries study the findings of GEO-7 interactively. Moreover, as part of information provision for Japan, IGES plans to proceed with the Japanese translation of the GEO-7 Executive Summary and will hold an explanatory seminar in the future.
List of contributors from IGES:
For more details on the "Global Environment Outlook 7 (GEO-7)": (UNEP Website)