In 1995, the Governing Council of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), at its eighteenth Session, called for the preparation of a new, comprehensive report on the state of the global environment now and in the year 2015 (UNEP, 1995). The document should be prepared, it suggested, in close co-operation with relevant international, regional, and national organizations and institutions. The Governing Council recommended that the report include essential problems of and threats to the environment, basic trends in environmental change, and the global effects of expected economic development, population increase, and consumption and production patterns. It further requested the inclusion of recommended action and measures, such as institutional and legal changes, that could effectively reverse unwelcome trends.
The Global Environment Outlook (GEO) Project is UNEP's response to the Governing Council's request. It addresses five questions:
1. What are
the major regional and global environmental problems, both current and
emerging?
2. What are
the major demographic, social, and economic driving forces behind the observed
problems and trends?
3. Where are
we heading if we continue doing "business as usual"?
4. Where do
we want to be heading?
5. What is
being done to address environmental concerns and what can be done in the
future to move forward on the path of sustainable development?
6. The GEO
Project has two main tracks:
A global environmental assessment process that is cross-sectoral and participatory, incorporating regional views and perceptions and building consensus on priority issues and actions through dialogue among policy-makers and scientists at regional and global levels; and
A biennial environmental assessment report series that reviews the state of the world's environment through identifying major environmental concerns, trends, and emerging issues-together with their causes, impacts, and societal responses-to provide guidance for international environmental policy formulation, action planning, and resource allocation.