A road map for global environmental assessments

More than 140 global environmental assessments (GEAs) have been initiated over the past four decades. There is ongoing demand for these diverse, large-scale, multi-stakeholder, typically intergovernmental processes that distil and synthesize knowledge to inform decision-making. GEAs are time-consuming, demanding processes often facing institutional and political constraints.

Nevertheless, compared with alternative science–policy–society interfaces, well-designed GEAs have higher potential for legitimacy, governmental buy-in and generating credible syntheses across disciplines and approaches^, particularly regarding wicked problems. GEAs have provoked and sometimes even shaped international negotiations. For example, the assessments of the IPCC informed and catalysed support for the Paris Agreement, and the fifth Global Environment Outlook (GEO-5) assessment influenced the 2030 Development Agenda.