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governments in environmental assessments, both in terms of human and financial resources. However, Module
despite the availability of considerable information on state and trends of the global environment,
there is still a lack of adequate and relevant data, and there is a loss of capacity of monitoring and 1
data collection systems.

Abu Dhabi, UAE

EXERCISE

In small groups, choose an environmental issue in your country (such as air quality, water
quality, soil erosion or desertification) and discuss why an integrated approach is needed to
address this issue. If you chose not to use an integrated approach, what approach would you
follow, and how would that be weaker? What policy sectors need to be addressed (energy,

agriculture, trade, transport, health, etc.)? How is the problem linked to events at the global
level (e.g., UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, World Trade Organization or
other UN conventions)? How could this issue evolve over the coming two decades?

The framework for the integrated environmental assessment being carried out in GEO-4 is illustrated
in Figure 2. The diagram recognizes two key domains of the Earth System: human society and the
environment. It considers five basic elements: Drivers, Pressures, State and trends, Impacts and Responses.

Drivers (including demographic changes, economic and societal processes) lead to more specific
pressures on the environment (including land use change, resource extraction, emissions of pollutants
and waste, and modification and movement of organisms). These pressures lead to changes of the state
of the environment, which are in addition to those that result from natural processes. The environmental
changes include climate change, stratospheric ozone depletion, changes in biodiversity and pollution or
degradation of air water and soils. These changes lead to changes of the services that the environment

IEA Training Manual Workshop for the National Reporting Toolkit (NRT) 13