Making global environmental assessments fit for future challenges

Global environmental assessments (GEAs) provide authoritative expert knowledge on environmental issues for an international audience. Demand for GEAs is growing rapidly: their number is increasing, and their thematic scope continually expands. At the same time, the environmental, social, and political context in which GEAs operate has changed dramatically over their 50-year history. Anthropogenic environmental problems have worsened significantly, while calls for just and equitable transformations are intensifying. In response, GEAs have begun to shift from primarily diagnosing problems to offering solutions and influencing policy, and more recently, towards supporting sustainability transformations. Assessment bodies increasingly recognize that meeting these novel ambitions requires deeper engagement from social sciences and humanities (SSH). However, efforts to include these disciplines have encountered considerable challenges. In this paper, we argue that for GEAs to effectively engage SSH, they must move beyond the prevailing paradigm of environmental assessment based on objectivity, singularity, and linearity, and instead experiment with the plurality and reflexivity of a broader range of knowledges. Such an approach is essential for advancing transformative societal changes. Achieving this requires fundamental reforms to GEA structures and processes. We propose five critical steps for making GEAs more responsive to emerging challenges and more reflexive about their responsibilities within global governance regimes. • Global environmental assessments (GEAs) are more in demand than ever. • There is a mismatch between their historical paradigm and their current context. • Fundamental reform of GEAs is needed for societal impact and transformative change. • Areas to improve are social sciences and humanities (SSH) engagement, pluralism, reflexivity, and co-production. • We propose 5 concrete steps to make GEAs fit for future challenges.