This document reflects on the ICSU Grand Challenges from the perspective of the Earth System Governance Project. It responds in particular to the report Earth System Science for Global Sustainability: The Grand Challenges, and more broadly to the ICSU Visioning Process

This reports sketches the interlinkages, parallels, and crosscutting themes between the ICSU Grand Challenges and the science agenda of the Earth System Governance Project. It concludes that the Grand Challenges resonate very well with the Earth System Governance Project and that the Project contributes research findings on numerous questions raised under the Grand Challenges. In particular to the entire spectrum of questions developed under Grand Challenge 4 on Responding: ‘Determine what institutional, economic and behavioural changes can enable effective steps toward global sustainability’.