A new global assessment of the planet's environmental health was unveiled this week at the seventh UN Environment Assembly (UNEA-7), with University of Portsmouth researchers playing a central role in shaping its economic blueprint for a sustainable future.
The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) has launched the seventh Global Environmental Outlook (GEO-7) , a flagship report developed with input from more than 300 scientists worldwide. GEO-7 provides an integrated assessment of the triple planetary crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution, offering long-term scenarios and solution pathways for policymakers.
Researchers from the University of Portsmouth's Centre for Blue Governance coordinated and co-authored the report's economic and finance chapter, which is considered one of its most important components.
The findings underline the central role that economic transformation must play in resolving escalating environmental threats. Many of the systemic shifts required to safeguard long-term wellbeing must originate in the economic and financial sectors and this chapter sets out credible, science-based measures that governments and institutions can adopt without delay.
Professor Pierre Failler, Professor of Economics, Faculty of Business & Law, University of Portsmouth
Professor Pierre Failler , who oversaw the chapter's development in collaboration with international colleagues, said: "The findings underline the central role that economic transformation must play in resolving escalating environmental threats. Many of the systemic shifts required to safeguard long-term wellbeing must originate in the economic and financial sectors and this chapter sets out credible, science-based measures that governments and institutions can adopt without delay."
The report outlines four major solution pathways designed to reorient global economic and financial systems in support of the Sustainable Development Goals. These include an approach to properly pricing environmental externalities, ensuring that the true costs of activities - such as carbon emissions and biodiversity loss - are reflected in market behaviour.
They also call for sustainability to be embedded across all levels of governance and macroeconomic decision-making, with environmental considerations integrated into fiscal planning and multilateral agreements.
As a global authorship team, we identified practical, science-based solutions to transform economic systems to provide the critical foundations for transformation towards a sustainable environmental future - all that is missing now is the political will and commitment to implement them.
Dr Tegan Evans, Revolution Plastics Institute, University of Portsmouth
A third pathway focuses on the financial sector, highlighting tools and frameworks that can unlock private financial capital for environmental sustainability projects. The final pathway considers the role and use of non-price instruments to engender pro-sustainable norms, attitudes and behaviours.
Taken together, these pathways present a vision for a transition that is timely, just and firmly grounded in scientific evidence. They address the complex interactions that link social, economic and environmental systems and provide policymakers with a framework for managing a shift towards global sustainability.
The release of GEO-7 at UNEA-7 arrives at a critical moment for international policymaking, amid mounting pressure for governments to adopt stronger and more coherent measures to confront accelerating environmental decline.
The Centre for Blue Governance played a substantial role in shaping these contributions. Professor Failler coordinated the chapter with Adina Relicovschi of the European Investment Bank, and Dr David C. Broadstock of the National University of Singapore and The Lantau Group, an alumnus of the University of Portsmouth's Economics programme.
The chapter also benefitted from the work of Dr Tegan Evans, from the Revolution Plastics Institute who served as a fellow, along with ten additional authors and contributors from across the world. "As a global authorship team, we identified practical, science-based solutions to transform economic systems to provide the critical foundations for transformation towards a sustainable environmental future - all that is missing now is the political will and commitment to implement them."
A copy of the report can be seen here .
