22 September 2022 – At the intergovernmental and expert-led scientific assessment procedures meeting of the seventh Global Environment Outlook (GEO-7), UNEP announced that Prof. Ying Wang, Vice Dean of IESD and Vice Dean of the College of Environment Science and Engineering, Tongji University, was elected as the Global Vice-Chari of GEO-7.

Global Environment Outlook (GEO) is a series of reports on the environment issued periodically by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP). The GEO project was initiated in response to the environmental reporting requirements of UN Agenda 21 and to a UNEP Governing Council decision of May 1995 which requested the production of a new comprehensive global state of the environment report. Six GEO reports have been published to date: GEO-1 in 1997, GEO-2000 in 1999, GEO-3 in 2002, GEO-4 in 2007, GEO-5 in 2012, and GEO-6 in 2019.

The meeting also announced the other Global Vice-Chair is Prof. Edgar E Gutierreze-Espeleta, former Minister of Environment and Energy for Costa Rica. Vice chairs ofGEO-7 Steering Committee needs to determine the overall orientation of GEO in terms of its objectives, functions, design criteria and process; establish the governance and implementation structure for GEO; request the relevant governance and implementation structures to develop procedures, undertake assessments and address needs in capacity building, knowledge generation and policy support; and consider how best to resource and administer the GEO process to ensure its objectives can be delivered in a timely and cost-effective manner.

Prof. Ying Wang has been coordinating GEO-6 as the Lead Author for Asia-Pacific report. Then she took the Coordinating Lead Author of GEO-6 Youth Asia-Pacific from 2018-2021. GEO-7 is expected to be completed in February 2025.