Guidance for Developing Executive Summaries and Summaries for Policy makers in GEO Assessments

An Executive Summary is, in principle, located at the start of each chapter to outline its key findings. These summaries are crucial to communicate the outcomes of the assessment to its primary audience: Member States of the UN Environment Assembly, observers, and all other stakeholders. The Executive Summaries also provide: 1. Confidence statements in support of each key finding (See next Guidance); 2. Links to the sections in the full chapter that contains the relevant supporting evidence and literature; 3. Input to the Summary for Policy Makers (SPM); 4. An explicit link between the SPM key findings and the sections within the full technical report providing supporting evidence (a traceable, evidence ‘paper trail’).