可持續發展科學探討全球、社會和人類系統之間的相互作用，以及導致這些系統退化的復雜機制，以及隨之而來的對人類福祉的風險。該雜志提供了一個平臺，將可持續發展科學建設成為一個不斷發展的學科，通過面對現有學科尚未解決的挑戰，為可持續發展的全球社會指明道路。這些努力包括同時理解現象和解決問題，不確定性和預防性原則的應用，知識的共同進化和對問題的認識，以及全球和局部問題解決之間的權衡。該雜志提倡基于科學的全球變化預測和影響評估，并尋求確保這些變化能夠被社會理解和接受的方法。可持續發展科學創造了一個跨學科的學術結構和發現過程，融合了自然科學、社會科學和人文科學。

Sustainability Science probes interactions between global, social, and human systems, the complex mechanisms that lead to degradation of these systems, and concomitant risks to human well-being. The journal provides a platform for building sustainability science as an evolving academic discipline which can point the way to a sustainable global society by facing challenges that existing disciplines have not addressed. These include endeavors to simultaneously understand phenomena and solve problems, uncertainty and application of the precautionary principle, the co-evolution of knowledge and recognition of problems, and trade-offs between global and local problem solving.The journal promotes science-based predictions and impact assessments of global change, and seeks ways to ensure that these can be understood and accepted by society. Sustainability Science creates a transdisciplinary academic structure and discovery process that fuses the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities.