Global Environment Outlook 5 - Environment for the Future We Want

Global Environment Outlook (GEO) is a consultative, participatory process that builds capacity for conducting integrated environmental assessments for reporting on the state, trends and outlooks of the environment. GEO is also a series of products that informs environmental decision-making and aims to facilitate the interaction between science and policy.

The rigorous assessment process aims to make GEO products scientifically credible and policy relevant - providing information to support environmental management and policy development. GEO also supports multi-stakeholder networking and intra and inter-regional cooperation to identify and assess key priority environmental issues at the regional levels.

A world-wide network of Collaborating Centre partners; a nomination process that allows governments and other stakeholders to nominate experts to the process; advisory groups to provide guidance on scientific and policy issues; and a comprehensive peer review processes are some of the integral elements of GEO.

Using the integrated environmental assessment (IEA) methodology, UNEP has produced four GEO reports thus far, which have analyzed environmental state and trends at the global and regional scales, described plausible outlooks for various time frames and formulated policy options.

Each GEO report builds on the assessment findings of its predecessor and draws from lessons learnt.

Full report available at http://www.unep.org/geo/