Environment for development - Policy Lessons from Global Environmental Assessments

New assessments will need to move from answering the question of ‘What are priority problems?’ to ‘What are priority actions?’

This report looks across these assessments for key environmental challenges, foreseen for the next decades, and for possible policy interventions for meeting them in a comprehensive manner. The eight assessments are consistent in their identification of the key issues in the management of the global environment: climate change; biodiversity loss, both terrestrial and aquatic (freshwater and marine); land-use and freshwater management, and pollution. The assessments conclude, each in its own focal area, that many technical solutions are affordable and available for achieving domestic and international targets. However, they display different perspectives on preferred policy options.

Environment for development

Building on earlier analyses by PBL (Lessons from global environmental assessments), this report was written at the request of UNEP, in support of the preparations for its 25th Session of the Governing Council/Global Ministerial Environment Forum, held in February 2009. It analyses whether messages from these assessments strengthen the findings of the Global Environment Outlook (GEO-4), and what insights they add to the central theme of GEO-4: environment for development.

• to Lessons from global environmental assessments

New assessments

This report is also timely, since many of the same organisations that have commissioned the assessments analysed in this report are currently considering the focus and contents of a new round of assessments. Some thoughts on possible directions for future assessments are offered based on our experience in some of these assessments. At this point in time, a policy demand can be expected to shift the focus from ‘priority problems’ to ‘priority actions’. In other words, future assessments would have to look into the governance question of how to deal with these problems.

The eight assessments

• The fourth Global Environment Outlook: Environment for Development (GEO-4), published by the United Nations Environment Programme.
• Climate Change 2007. The Fourth Assessment Report (IPCC AR4), published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
• The OECD Environmental Outlook to 2030 (OECD EO), published by the OECD.
• The International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD), which is, among others, supported by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the UN Development Programme (UNDP), the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Bank (IAASTD 2008).
• The Human Development Report 2007/2008. Fighting climate change: Human solidarity in a divided world (HDR).
• The World Water Development Report 2 - Water, a Shared Responsibility and 3 - Water in a Changing World (WWDR), published by the World Water Assessment Programme.
• Climate Change and Water, Technical paper VI, published by IPCC.
• The Comprehensive Assessment of Water Management in Agriculture (CAWMA), published by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR).

Related PBL publications

• Lessons from global environmental assessments
• Background report to the OECD Environmental Outlook to 2030. Overviews, details, and methodology of model-based analysis
• Fourth Global Environment Outlook - Environment for development - GEO-4