2015 will be a watershed year for sustainable development. Major international conferences – on financing for development the post-2015 development agenda, and climate change – will take momentous decisions that could, if effectively followed up, have profound implications for the future of our societies, our economies and of our planet.
This is the context in which this year’s Global Sustainable Development Report (GSDR) appears. Building upon the 2014 Prototype report,1 the current Report responds to the Rio+20 mandate to contribute to strengthening the science-policy interface (SPI) for sustainable development, particularly in the context of the high-level political forum (HLPF).2 Given the anticipated adoption in September of the post-2015 development agenda with its sustainable development goals, the report asks how well prepared the scientific community is to inform the sort of integrated and multidimensional problem solving and policy making that will be needed for implementing this agenda.