STOCKHOLM CONVENTION
ON PERSISTENT ORGANIC
POLLUTANTS (POPs)

The Fourth Global Environment Outlook (GEO-4)  Draft 1 Review Process Underway

The Global Environment Outlook (GEO) is the UNEP flagship report series on the state-and-trends of the global environment first requested in a UNEP Governing Council decision of 1995.

The peer review process of first draft of the fourth Global Environment Outlook (GEO-4) report is now underway by governments, experts, science institutions, international organizations and other stakeholders. Scientific and policy review has always been a key component of the Global Environment Outlook (GEO) process, involving many stakeholders in and outside government structures.

The involvement of MEAs in the GEO-4 review process is important to UNEP and follows up on a recommendation of the GEO-4/MEAs Consultation in October 2005 in Bonn, Germany, that UNEP involves MEAs experts in the GEO-4 production and review process. This is in order to ensure that important MEAs’ scientific and policy issues of global and regional significance, including emerging issues, gaps and challenges, are given due consideration in the GEO-4 production process.

The underlying theme of the GEO-4 report is environment for development, highlighting the critical issues of sustainable development.  In assessing the state-and-trends of the global as well as emerging issues, the report also addresses issues related to human wellbeing and the valuation of environmental goods-and-services, building upon the work of the Millennium Ecosystems Assessment (MA).  About 200 regional and global experts have been involved in drafting the GEO-4 report which consists of five sections and 10 chapters.

Given that the GEO-4 draft report review is an open process for all stakeholders we would like to encourage all interested individuals to participate in this review process. You may wish to review the whole report or to focus on chapters of relevance to this and other related MEAs. The draft report is already available for external review at:  http://dewa03.unep.org/geo/review/tiki-index.php  (Username: Reviewer, Password: GEO4Draft1).   The guidelines on the review as well as a template to use for presenting comments to UNEP are also available at this website.

The deadline for sending comments to UNEP is 15 July 2006.  All those who provide substantive written comments will be acknowledged in an annex to the GEO-4 report and will also receive a free copy of the report.

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