Apoorva Arya, co-founder and CEO of the Circular Innovation Lab, was invited as a Circular Economy Expert to attend the scoping meeting for the Seventh Edition of the Global Environment Outlook (GEO-7) of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in Nairobi. The Global Environment Outlook (GEO) is an independent expert-led assessment of the state of the global environment and the flagship report of UNEP.
The scoping meeting convened expert discussions on food, energy, and waste systems with the goal of assessing and determining a scoping document for the development of GEO-7. The objectives of the meeting centred around developing, reviewing, and approving the key investigation areas of GEO-7.
During the meeting, Apoorva Arya was invited to participate in a dialogue on circular economy alongside other experts in the field. These included:
Patrick Schröder - Senior Research Fellow at Chatham House
Ke Wang - Program Director at Platform for Accelerating the Circular Economy (PACE)
Kari Herlevi - Project Director at Sitra
Bonmwa Fwangkwal - Program Manager at Dalberg Implement for the African Circular Economy Alliance (ACEA) Secretariat
Jocelyn Blériot - Executive Lead, Institutions, Governments and Cities at the Ellen MacArthur Foundation
During the dialogue, the experts discussed the importance of the transition to a circular economy and its incorporation in GEO-7 as a key component to tackling global environmental challenges.
At the general scoping meeting key findings from the past GEO-6 and other significant environmental assessments were built upon to determine the scope of GEO-7. Some of these past findings and conclusions that were built upon included:
The amount of environmental destruction currently faced means that presently available strategies are unable to keep up and respond effectively to environmental challenges.
None of the major international environmental targets (such as the Paris Agreement and Aichi Goals, amongst others) or the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) will be achieved under the existing policies. As a result, we are facing a triple planetary crisis of pollution, biodiversity loss, and climate change.
To attain an environmentally sustainable world by 2050, effective policies that address the underlying systems that contribute to environmental degradation must be implemented.
Along with providing an outlook that offers helpful direction on the potential environmental and socio-economic implications of the necessary transformational changes, GEO-7 will assess the state and trends of the current global environment, the related implications for human well-being, and the achievement of the SDGs. Finally, it will also provide updates on the environmental effects of the worldwide Covid-19 pandemic, recent natural disasters, and armed conflicts which will provide continuity with earlier GEOs.