ABSTRACT
The Global Environment Outlook (GEO) has been the flagship publication of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) since the mid-1990s. It is the most comprehensive, regular review of the state and trends of the global environment. GEO was introduced at a time when governments and other stakeholders lacked a common information basis to develop a broad and comprehensive view of environmental issues, following the 1992 Rio Conference on Environment and Development. Six global editions of GEO have been published over the past quartercentury. And while GEO is a global process, its underlying integrated environmental assessment approach has inspired countless assessment and reporting processes at regional, national and local levels around the world. Over and above providing analyses of environmental state and trends, related policy responses and a futureoriented outlook from which it derives its name, GEO systematizes and frames its analysis in the context of sustainable development.
