ence to support the achievement of SDGs.In its Initial Design document, Future Earth (2013) identified three highly aggre-gated research themes covering both natural and social sciences: dynamic planet,global development, and transition to global sustainability. The organization pro-posed new approaches to co-designing and co-producing solution-oriented science,knowledge, and innovation for global sustainable development. These proposals arebased on the concept of transdisciplinary science that emphasizes the importance ofco-design with stakeholders (Mauser et al.2013). However, the development of theFuture Earth research platform initially created many tensions between the interdis-ciplinary activities of earlier environmental change research programs and theleadership of the highly aggregated agenda, and the transdisciplinary approach ofthe Future Earth transition team, the funders, and the sponsors—including ICSU/ISSC (Leemans2016). Those tensions were resolved by accepting all the previousprojects of the global change programs under the three-themed research platform ofFuture Earth, but further efforts are needed tofill the gap between the researchers inthe original international global change programs and the new transdisciplinaryresearch agenda of Future Earth.