GEO-7 Summary for Policymakers

This crucial meeting for the GEO-7 process, taking place from 2 to 6 June 2025, will see two key elements: 

• The SPM drafting meeting: The Summary for Policymakers (SPM) is a component of GEO intergovernmental and expert-led assessment reports, providing a policy-relevant summary of the main GEO-7 report. It highlights key messages and summarised findings that are relevant for policymaking. A selected number of authors, led by the assessment co-chairs will meet to finalize key issues in the preparation of the Second Order Draft of the SPM, which will go through an intergovernmental peer review process followed by a negotiation and approval by the Member States in November 2025.
• The finalization of the MESAG validation opinion: Validation of the GEO reports is a process by which the Multidisciplinary Expert Scientific Advisory Group (MESAG) provide their endorsement that the processes for the preparation of GEO reports have been duly followed.

This meeting is co-hosted by the Government of the Republic of Korea and the Korea Environment Institute (KEI). On the side of these two events, the GEO-7 experts will also participate in the 2025 World Environment Day celebrations as well as the Korea Environment Institute Science-policy Forum. 

Following a very successful UN Environment Assembly, the resolution on the future of the Global Environment Outlook (GEO) was approved by Member States on March 2, 2022 and GEO-7 process preparations began with the inaugural meetings of GEO-7, the Ad hoc Open Ended Meeting of the Assessment Procedures and Supporting Functions of the Global Environment Outlook Meeting and the second ad hoc open ended meeting of the seventh Global Environment Outlook.

GEO-7 will build on GEO-6 and also continue to assess the state and trends on the global environment, the implications for human well-being and the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), as well as providing an outlook that provides useful guidance on the possible environmental and socio-economic implications of the transformational changes needed.  This will ensure continuity with previous GEOs and allow GEO-7 to provide some updates on the environmental impact of the global pandemic and recent disasters and conflicts.  For the outlook, GEO-7 may be able to provide modelling and scenarios analysis of the socio-economic impacts (both positive and negative) of different solutions pathways.  This additional analysis will provide additional rationale for Member States to implement the proposed solutions pathways.

The GEO-7 process involves a world-wide network of authors, fellows and partners; a transparent nomination process that allows governments and other stakeholders to nominate experts to the process; advisory groups to provide guidance on scientific and policy issues such as the Multidisciplinary Expert Scientific Advisory Group (MESAG) and the Intergovernmental and Multi-stakeholder Advisory Group (IMAG) and a comprehensive peer review processes are some of the integral elements of GEO-7.