The background paper is informed by in-depth research on a number of underlying topics in designing of global integrated environmental assessments (IEAs) that are critical for the identification and analysis of options. In addition to the research, the consultants carried out a series of semi-structured interviews with senior representatives of UNEP’s partners and leading assessment experts about the future of GEO. Some excerpts of these interviews are included in this paper to provide complementary perspectives on the topics that have been analysed. The list of interviewees is provided in Annex 3. The background paper is structured as follows. Section 2 provides an overview of the history of GEO, Section 3 starts off with a discussion of the need to consider positioning assessments such as GEO in an increasingly complex global environmental assessment landscape, followed by a discussion of the range of diverse functions an assessment can play. Section 4 reviews the importance of assessment governance, including its role, forms, functions and mechanisms. Section 5 reviews considerations for assessment process design and the selection of methods. Section 6 looks at the outputs of assessments and Section 7 the closely related question of assessment uptake, use and learning. Section 8 discusses the financing of assessments. The concluding section summarises the main findings of the research. Sections 3-8 also start with a box providing key findings.