For nearly 50 years, UNEP has been working to improve the environment for current and future generations. As part of this work, UNEP periodically asks the expert community to assess the current state of the environment, how effective our policy response has been and what the future holds either if we stay on our current path or shift to one that is more environmentally sustainable. The sixth and most recent edition of The Global Environment Outlook, subtitled Healthy Planet, Healthy People, presents a very daunting picture but also many reasons for hope.
Global Environmental Outlooks assess broad trends and propose sustainable pathways, and their authors generally do not anticipate or examine potential global shocks. That is because while major global shocks occur and have certainly happened in the past, the broad trends of increasing resource extraction, environmental degradation and pollution have have always tended to persist.
However, the scale and depth of COVID-19’s impacts are unprecedented, and they offer us an opportunity to rethink how nature and humanity interact. Will we continue to fight one another for supremacy of the planet, or will we work hand-in-hand to build a planet that sustains us all. In crafting this first GEO for Business brief, we thought it was important to look at these two possible futures to explain how we might choose one path over the other and the role of business in achieving the more positive future.