Global Environment Outlook 7, the flagship assessment of UN Environment Programme (UNEP), was released on 9 December 2025 at UNEA-7 in Nairobi. It synthesizes evidence across climate, biodiversity, land degradation, and pollution, and frames action around the transformation of five systems: energy, food, materials and waste, economy and finance, and environmental management. One achievement sits behind the pages: a consent-based way to bring Indigenous and local knowledge into a global report, on the record and with accountability. For the first time in the GEO series, Indigenous Knowledge and Local Knowledge was systematically included through a documented process, with dedicated space in the report and in the Executive Summary for decision-makers.

Dr. Sarah-Lan Mathez-Stiefel, an Associated Senior Researcher at the Wyss Academy for Nature, played a central role in that work. As co-convenor of the Indigenous Knowledge and Local Knowledge Task Force, she helped guide how this knowledge was brought into GEO-7 in collaboration with the report’s Co-Chairs. At the same time, she served as Coordinating Lead Author for one of the report’s Indigenous Knowledge and Local Knowledge chapeaux and was part of the wider author team that helped shape this contribution across the assessment.

The process mattered as much as the outcome. GEO-7’s approach combined several elements: a dedicated task force, Indigenous Knowledge and Local Knowledge content embedded across all chapters, five stand-alone chapeaux, and a series of dialogues with representatives of Indigenous Peoples and local communities. The dialogues report informed both GEO-7 and the Executive Summary, helping ensure that Indigenous and local perspectives were not treated as an add-on, but as part of the evidence base used to inform global environmental decision-making.

The same standards guide our work with Indigenous communities in Peru, with Sarah-Lan in the lead. Since 2023, the Wyss Academy for Nature, FENAMAD, and the Centre for Development and Environment (CDE) have co-developed an Indigenous governance project in Madre de Dios. The focus is on characterizing Indigenous territorial governance schemes and assessing their impacts on the well-being of people and nature. It also includes developing strategies to support these schemes and strengthening leadership through an Indigenous Researchers Program.

The continuity is deliberate: the principles that helped shape GEO-7—consent, review, attribution, and accountability—are the same ones that guide Sarah-Lan and the team’s work with Indigenous communities in Peru. In practice, this means that knowledge is not extracted and translated elsewhere. It is co-produced, reviewed with participants, grounded in relationships, and carried forward in ways that recognize authorship, strengthen governance, and connect local realities to larger processes of environmental change.