Summary of Recommendations to the GEO-5 Team by the Science & Policy Advisory Board following the Final Evaluation

of the GEO-5 Assessment Report

Overall, the Board noted that the GEO-5 scientific assessment process is a vast improvement over GEO-4 and congratulates the UNEP GEO Team for this tremendous effort. The Board, however, recommends some steps to further improve the scientific credibility and policy relevance of the report and process, as well as suggestions to improve future GEO processes.

1. Recommendations for Specific Sections/Themes of the GEO-5

1.1. Main Messages and Key Findings
The board noted that the main messages and key findings are the crucial vehicle to communicate the GEO-5 report. However, the main messages are currently not harmonized (based on draft 2 of the GEO-5). The Board therefore recommends that the main messages and key findings should be revised and standardized throughout the report following the guidance provided below. 1.1.1. Guidance for revising the main messages and key findings Separate main messages and key findings should be placed at the beginning of each chapter. Both can be very short. The main messages should follow the storyline of the chapter, where appropriate. For each chapter, the main messages should be limited to 6 while the key findings should be limited to 5. The key findings should be highlighted (e.g. in a box) The presentation of the main messages and key findings should be limited to 1 page, where possible. Where there are interlinkages between the main messages of the different chapters, each main message should be checked to ensure consistency in its content as compared to the content of the other chapters of the report. In general all main messages should be checked across the report to ensure coherence and consistency. 1.1.2. Priority actions during the revision of the main messages

If the GEO-5 team is limited in the time it can invest in finishing the messages and findings, the Board recommends that the following actions be taken in priority: The first priority should be to improve the readability and clarity of existing messages The second priority should be to do a cross-check of messages to make sure that they are consistent across chapters. The third priority should be to add a set of key findings.

1.2. Chapter 1 - Drivers of the Global Environment

Chapter 1 (Drivers of the Global Environment) of the GEO-5 report is supposed to set the context for the whole GEO report. However, it is the opinion of the Board that the drivers (as listed in the Draft 2 of Chapter 1) are not adequately reflected across the remainder of the report. The board therefore recommends that the main messages of each chapter should be examined to ensure that they are consistent with the content of the drivers chapter. Overall, Chapter 1 should be revised to make sure that all drivers discussed in the report are mentioned in Chapter 1.

1.3. Chapter 14 - Regional Synthesis

There was a general consensus among Board Members that the current version of Chapter 14 of the report is inadequate and requires further improvement. This notion was also supported by reviewers comments as received by ESSP. The GEO-5 Team had already started working on improving the chapter prior to the Advisory Board evaluation meeting; hence, they provided the Board with a draft outline for the rewrite of Chapter 14. The recommendations presented below are therefore based on this draft outline. 1.3.1. Main Messages a. The Board recommends that authors ensure that there is adequate balance in the presentation of the main messages and key findings. b. Authors should follow the Boards recommendations regarding main messages and findings (refer to Section 1.1 above). 1.3.2. Introduction a. The Board recommends a very concise introduction. b. A possible suggestion is to keep the second paragraph of the introduction section in the Draft 2 of Chapter 14, as the new introduction. 1.3.3. Background a. The Board agrees to the contents of Table 14.1 (in the Draft 2 of Chapter 14), as it was the result of the regional consultations conducted by UNEP during the development of Part 2 of the GEO-5. It should however be noted that this table may not necessarily reflect the priority regional themes for each region, as the content was derived from a

list of choices provided by UNEP to participants during the regional consultation (and not the result of an environmental reporting process). This clarification should be made in the report. b. The Board agrees with the authors intention (as indicated in the draft outline) to discuss in the text the uniqueness of the regional analysis and its limitations. It is recommended that the limitations be stated in the appropriate section of Chapter 14, which should explain that the limitations stem from the limited choices of regional priorities and internationally agreed goals available to participants during the regional consultations. c. With reference to the reintroduction of drivers and the question of whether they should be discussed at length again in Chapter 14 (as indicated in the draft outline), the Board recommends that Chapter 14 should be adequately linked with the various drivers already discussed in Chapter 1, but drivers should not be described in detail again. 1.3.4. Summary of regional chapters The Board recommends that the section on summary of regional chapters should be shortened. One possible way of doing this is to concentrate on main messages and key findings. 1.3.5. Scientific Quality of the chapter With reference to the scientific credibility of the report, the Board requests a clarification of the source, methodology and meaning of Figures 14.7 and 14.8 (see Draft 2 of Chapter 14). It is the opinion of the Board that these results are not factual information but interpretations of the authors. If they are the interpretation of authors, then the text should make this clear.

1.4. Chapter 16: Global Responses

Similar to the case of Chapter 14, there was also general agreement among Board Members that the current version of Chapter 16 of the report is not adequate and requires further improvement. A revised draft of this chapter was already at an advanced stage and was provided by the GEO-5 Team to the Board. The recommendations presented below are therefore based on this revised draft. 1.4.1. Structure and language of the Chapter a. The Board finds the structure of the chapter appropriate. b. The Board recommends ensuring that the language used in the main messages and the conclusions are positive and enabling. 1.4.2. Interlinkage with other part of the GEO-5 - adherence to recommendations from the Advisory Boards mid-term evaluation

The Board concludes that comments from the mid-term evaluation have been mostly dealt with. One of the observations from the mid-term evaluation should however be kept in mind in finalizing the Chapter: "The current draft of Chapter 10 [now Chapter 16] is only loosely connected to the rest of the report. This chapter should be re-written and aligned much more closely with other chapters. The policy options presented in this chapter should be closely connected with findings in other chapters." The Board welcomes the fact that Section 2 of Chapter 16 makes references to Part 1 (i.e., chapters 1-7) of the report. The Board recommends an additional effort to make explicit connections to the other chapters of the report. This could be done (in addition to the cross-checking task of main messages across the entire report) by screening the lists of policy response options in the boxes with regard to which drivers these address and making explicit references back to the drivers.

1.5. Theme - Extreme Events (Floods and Droughts)

The board noted that extreme events were not adequately included in the main messages of the chapter on Water (Chapter 4, Part 1) and two Regional Chapters: Asia Pacific and Latin America (Chapter 9 and 11, Part 2). The following recommendations were therefore provided to address this: a. In the Water Chapter Extreme events (floods and droughts) should be added to the main messages, in a way consistent with the content of the chapter b. In the Regional Chapters These chapters contain the concept of integrated water resources management (IWRM). Where appropriate, the concept of integrated flood and drought management should also be mentioned.

2. Scientific Review of the GEO-5

2.1. General point on ensuring scientific credibility and quality
The Advisory Board recommends that all actors involved in the development of the content of the GEO-5 at this final stage should refer back specifically to the document: Guidelines for Ensuring Scientific Credibility and Policy Relevance of the GEO-5 Assessment, which provides detailed information on ensuring the scientific credibility of the GEO-5.

2.2. Specific recommendation on ensuring scientific credibility - annexes

To ensure transparency, credibility and completeness of the GEO-5 report, the Board recommends that the GEO-5 Secretariat make available as much as possible all relevant supporting documents to the GEO-5 report, in form of electronic annexes to be made available on GEO-5 website after the release of the report.

2.3. Requirements for signing off on the GEO-5 by the Advisory Board
The Advisory Board requires a sign-off by the UNEP GEO-5 Team (and all actors involved in the GEO-5 content development) before it can sign-off on the report. The sign-off from the GEO-5 Team and other actors should indicate that the content of the guidance document mentioned above has been adhered to. In particular, the following are required from reviewers and authors, before the Board can sign-off on the GEO-5: 2.3.1. From reviewers a. A grade for how well authors complied with Section 5.4 of the Guidelines for Ensuring Scientific Credibility 1 - Poor, 2 - Acceptable, 3 Very Good. b. A grade for how well authors complied with Sections 5.5 and 5.6 of the Guidelines for Ensuring Scientific Credibility 1 - Poor, 2 - Acceptable, 3 Very Good. 2.3.2. From ESSP The Advisory Board requires a report from ESSP, signed by its Chair, (via UNEP) providing the following information: a. List of networks (and some qualification/quantification of their reach) through which the call for reviewers was made; b. Criteria used for selection of reviewers; c. How geographical balance and representation was achieved/addressed; d. Statistical breakdown of nominated reviewers and breakdown of those selected from the nominees. e. Guidelines provided by UNEP to ESSP for the selection of reviewers should also be provided.

2.4. Post GEO-5 Recommendations for scientific credibility and quality

a. The Board recommends that for future GEO processes, the Terms of Reference for the organization or body responsible for conducting the scientific review should be much clearer than that prepared for GEO-5. In particular, it is recommended that detailed information/instructions should be provided on specific requirements for reviewers, such as level of scientific qualification and competence required and the desired geographical and gender representation. b. It is also recommended that the review process for future GEO assessment should be made more transparent. It is important that all stakeholders be able to have access to all aspects of the review process such as reviewers comments and authors responses. c. In order to ensure the inclusion of all relevant stakeholders, the Board recommends that future GEO-5 should seek to include the UNEPs Major Groups & Stakeholders in the review process, based on criteria to be specified. d. In considering all of the recommendations listed above, it must be noted that scientific qualification and competence must remain the principal criteria in the selections of reviewers.

3. General Improvements to the GEO Process

The Board recommends some steps to further improve future GEO Processes. 1. In order to adequately assess and record the improvements in the GEO-5 process as compared to earlier GEO processes, it is recommended that an evaluation of the policy relevance of the GEO-5 should be carried out, in particular by: a. Consulting countries and major groups & stakeholders (after the release of the GEO-5) about their opinion of the GEO-Process and how to further improve it. b. Consulting countries and major groups & stakeholders (after the release of the GEO-5) about their use of GEO-5, and request input on how to improve its usefulness; c. The following information should be made available by UNEP: i. Positive aspects and improvements achieved in the GEO process (including author selection, criteria for selections, scientific credibility of authors) ii. Gaps and other aspects where improvements are needed 2. Other recommendations are: a. Need for adequate guidance across all chapters: In GEO-5, authors were given specific guidance for Part 2 on how to go from scientific findings to policy options; the Board recommends that in the future, authors should be given such guidance for all of parts of the assessment. b. Need for better integration and coherence of contents: It is the opinion of the Board that the GEO-5 (in its current state) has an overall inadequate level of integration. Therefore, it is recommended that UNEP should ensure that mechanisms are put in place at the outset to ensure better integration. To ensure this integration, special experts should be designated to read through the whole of the GEO report, with the sole purpose of ensuring continuity, integration and coherence. c. Need for improved engagement of countries: In order to improve the engagement of countries in future GEO Process, the Board recommends that the engagement process applied in the recent State and Outlook of the European Environment (SOER 2010) (especially for the country assessments), should be examined for possible lessons learned. d. Improving access to environmental datasets: The Board recommends that a quick UNEP-internal review be conducted (after the release of GEO-5) on options for further streamlining access to environmental datasets around the globe (building on the data review report, GEO data portal, UNEP Live etc) and options for building capacity of governments to be able to provide country level data required to conduct global environmental assessment.