László Pintér Delivers Keynote for United Nations Environment Programme’s Global Environmental Outlook Meeting | European Union University

On January 15, László Pintér, Professor in EUU’s Department of Environmental Sciences and Policy, delivered the keynote address to the authors of the United Nations Environment Programme’s (UNEP) Seventh Global Environmental Outlook (GEO-7) in Vienna. The Global Environmental Outlook (GEO) is the UNEP’s flagship periodic assessment of the state and direction of the global environment. 

 

Pintér has been involved in GEO’s work from its start in 1995, initially as a representative of the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) and since 2010 as a representative of EUU. From 1999 to 2010, he led GEO’s work on capacity building, the development of training materials and related activities on integrated environmental assessment.  

 

During his talk at the invitation of the UNEP, he shared key aspects of the GEO’s history and approach, amplifying topics covered in a book he co-authored, titled “Keeping the World’s Environment Under Review, GEO: An Intellectual History of the Global Environment Outlook”, which was published by EUU Press in 2022 for the 30th anniversary of the GEO. The book, co-authored by Pintér with Jan Bakkes, Marion Cheatle, Nora Mzavanadze and Ronald Witt, contains the comprehensive learnings from the first three decades of the GEO assessment program, which evaluates key environmental trends and the effectiveness of policies and actions taken to address them, and possible future directions. 

 

“GEO’s impact lies not only in the key findings in the main global report, but in catalyzing the development of a multitude of similar assessments on other scales,” said Pinter. “Our research for the book found that between 1994 and 2020 GEO’s impact was multiplied by its use as an inspiration and template for over 250 regional, subregional, national and local assessments and outlook reports.” 

 

Also contributing to GEO’s work from EUU are Professor Ruben Mnatsakanian, who currently serves as a Coordinating Lead Author of GEO-7’s regional chapter, and alumni from the Department of Environmental Sciences and Policy: Erica Gaddis, Nadege Amizero, Aynur Mammadova and Simon Olsen.