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GEO-7 Report: an unequivocal diagnosis of the state of the global environment
Published by the United Nations Environment Programme, the seventh Global Environment Outlook (GEO-7) provides the most comprehensive assessment of the global environment ever carried out. Drawing on the work of 287 scientists from 82 countries, this flagship report shows that following current development pathways would entail considerable environmental, social and economic costs, while deep transformations of human systems are both necessary and possible. INRAE contributes to the report through the coordination of a chapter devoted to the governance of systemic transformations.
Published on 22 January 2026
The Global Environment Outlook – Seventh Edition: A Future We Choose is UNEP’s flagship environmental assessment. The product of a large collective effort involving scientists from a wide range of disciplines, GEO-7 provides a joint analysis of the major environmental crises facing the world today: climate change, biodiversity loss, land degradation, and pollution and waste.
The diagnosis set out in the report is clear. Maintaining business-as-usual development pathways would lead to a rapid and lasting intensification of pressures on ecosystems, with major consequences for human health, food security and economic prosperity. The report highlights in particular that pollution is already responsible for millions of premature deaths each year, while the economic costs of environmental degradation amount to trillions of dollars annually.
By contrast, GEO-7 shows that another path is possible. Investing in climate action, the maintenance of healthy ecosystems and the large-scale reduction ofpollution could avoid a significant share of these impacts, while delivering substantial economic and social benefits in the medium and long term. The report thus underlines the growing gap between the cost of inaction and the potential gains associated with deep transformations of production, consumption and governance systems.
The report assesses the potential for transformations across five key systems that structure contemporary societies: economy and finance, energy systems, food systems, materials and waste, and the protection and restoration of the environment. GEO-7 stresses the need for coordinated approaches, grounded in public policies, economic frameworks and diverse forms of innovation, collective action, as well as social and cultural change. Recognising the diversity of knowledge systems, including Indigenous Knowledge and Local Knowledge, is identified as a key lever for just and sustainable transitions.
Governing transformations of human systems
INRAE’s contribution to the GEO-7 report highlights the role of the social sciences in understanding and governing the systemic transformations required to address global environmental crises.
The governance of these transformations is a central issue in the report and is the focus of Chapter 12, coordinated by Bruno Turnheim (INRAE) and Monica Kerretts-Makau (Arizona State University). This chapter seeks to clarify what is meant by “systemic transformations” and to analyse the conditions required to initiate and implement them.
Building on a substantial interdisciplinary body of scientific knowledge, the chapter brings together three distinct social science perspectives to derive guiding principles. Taken together, the socio-ecological, socio-technical and socio-economic perspectives make it possible to understand systems as complex assemblages of technologies, institutions, social practices, values and power relations. These perspectives converge on a shared conclusion: neither incremental improvements nor purely technological solutions will be sufficient to meet global environmental goals.
The chapter highlights the need for strategic approaches to transformations targeting entire systems, and emphasises the central role of public authorities in their capacity for orientation and coordination. It also stresses the importance of jointly addressing environmental and social dimensions, by taking into account issues of justice, inequality and power relations, as well as the plurality of actors and forms of knowledge involved.
These analyses aim to provide reference points for designing and assessing coherent transformation strategies, thereby limiting the risks of fragmented or counterproductive actions and of strengthening their legitimacy and social justification.
This contribution aligns with the broader objective of GEO-7: to provide decision-makers and all relevant stakeholders with a robust scientific basis for the design and implementation of coherent policies to address environmental crises. Through its participation in this report, INRAE contributes to an international knowledge synthesis effort at the interface between scientific research and decision-making support.
“What is unprecedented in this seventh edition of the GEO is that Member States asked us to develop a theoretical and methodological framework explicitly designed to address transformations of human systems, which are seen as necessary to significantly improve environmental outcomes. The social science literature on this topic is now substantial, and we chose to synthesise this body of knowledge in Chapter 12, in order to distil fundamental principles to frame the understanding of these processes and inform action. This, too, is unprecedented.”
Bruno Turnheim, Research Director at INRAE and Coordinating Lead Author of Chapter 12 of the GEO-7 report
Governing systemic transformations: six key principles
The chapter coordinated by Bruno Turnheim (INRAE) and Monica Kerretts-Makau (Arizona State University) sets out six guiding principles to improve the governance of systemic transformations:
- Explicitly target whole systems, addressing underlying sources of lock-in.
- Combine the development of sustainable innovations with the phase-out of unsustainable systems, through clear and explicit choices.
- Articulate short- and long-term intervantions, taking account of non-linear dynamics and intergenerational justice.
- Build capacities to anticipate and manage uncertainty, in the context of non-linear change.
- Mobilise a plurality of actors and knowledge systems, which requires dedicated procedures for coordination, inclusion and participation.
- Acknowledge the political nature of transformations, by overcoming resistance from vested interests while ensuring the reduction of inequalities and the protection of vulnerable groups..