The sixth edition of the Global Environment Outlook which is the most comprehensive and rigorous assessment on the state of the environment completed by the United Nations in the last five years was published on 13 March 2019 during the fourth United Nations Environment Assembly. The launch of the report included a series of interactive dialogues and presentations.
The first session saw the Global Environment Outlook team present the findings from the report. The moderator Nadya Hutagalung, UN Environment Goodwill Ambassador, opened the session followed by Jian Liu, UN Environment’s Chief Scientist and Director for Science Division. The panel for the first session included Paolo Soprano, Co-Chair of the High-level Intergovernmental and Stakeholder Advisory Group (HLG), who explained how the report had been prepared in an 18-month process culminating in January 2019, when the Summary for Policy-Makers was negotiated and approved at a four-day (21 to 24 January) meeting in Nairobi. His Cochair Yi Huang highlighted the report’s relevance for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the fight against climate change. Joyeeta Gupta and Paul Ekins, Co-Chairs of the sixth edition of the Global Environment Outlook introduced the theme of the report, “Healthy Planet, Healthy People.” They highlighted the drivers of an unhealthy planet, and presented statistics on the crosscutting issues of chemicals, waste, resource use, energy consumption, and food waste. They also discussed policy innovation, noting that the report contains case studies of policy effectiveness on environmental issues. Bob Watson, Chair, Intergovernmental Panel on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), noted that the message of all global assessments from the GEO process, IPBES and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), is the same: that without rapid transformative change, global warming, biodiversity loss and land degradation will continue.
