Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability aims to track the emergence of a new innovative sustainability science discipline by integrating across regional and global systems with their typical dimensions, human-environment interactions and management challenges. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability thus emphasises the actual interdisciplinary sustainability research approaches, the solutions it provides and their dissemination and application. The subject of environmental sustainability is divided into 6 themed annual issues. Each theme helps to identify, understand and solve sustainability problems and are not mutually exclusive. The overlap results from the actual complexity of combining all the sustainability science dimensions and approaches. The themes are:

1. Environmental change issues;
2. Environmental change assessments;
3. System dynamics and sustainability;
4. Sustainability governance and transformation;
5. Sustainability challenges;
6. Sustainability science.

This set allows for flexible integration of natural sciences with the social sciences, humanities and engineering disciplines. The themes focus on major global-change systems and problems (Themes 1-3), the emerging new transdisciplinary sustainability science, as generated in Future Earth or as part of the evolving UN's sustainable development goals (Themes 4 and 5) and a more philosophical reflection on approaches of sustainability science (Theme 6).