The Global Environment Outlook, Seventh Edition: A Future We Choose, the product of 287 multi- disciplinary scientists from 82 countries, is the most comprehensive scientific assessment of the global environment ever carried out. The full report is here.
The GEO-7 recognizes the pivotal role of Indigenous Peoples’ knowledge and local knowledge to enhance the objectives of assessing the current state of the global environment, co-constructing desired futures and pathways towards these futures. This includes recognizing the challenges that Indigenous Peoples face regarding the planetary crisis and their impacts. Additionally, GEO-7 acknowledges the solutions that Indigenous knowledge and local knowledge holders have developed to address environmental challenges, as well as prospects for the future.
Dialogues between Indigenous People’s knowledge, local knowledge (IK & LK) and scientific knowledge are often marked by both good intentions and strong tensions. When these dialogues occur within a political framework such as that of the Global Environment Outlook (GEO), a dominantly scientific assessment organized by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the complexities are multiplied by the great diversity of perspectives, themes, agendas and ways of knowing that are sought to be articulated. Notwithstanding numerous challenges, the recognition of the vital role Indigenous Peoples and local communities play in environmental governance, and the valuable insights they offer for the construction of sustainable pathways, has motivated “the systematic inclusion of Indigenous Knowledge into the 7th Global Environmental Outlook” (UNEP, 2025). The incorporation of IK & LK in the 7th Global Environment Outlook Report (GEO-7) is also driven by the need to highlight specific challenges faced by Indigenous Peoples and local communities and contribute to more culturally appropriate and locally relevant solutions to environmental problems (UNEP, 2022).
These and other intentions guided the GEO-7 to co-organize three IK & LK Dialogues. The messages that this book comprises come from these events and constitute a clear expression of significant inclusive efforts made by UNEP.