Natural Resources Forum, a United Nations Sustainable Development Journal, focuses on international, multidisciplinary issues related to sustainable development, with an emphasis on developing countries. The journal seeks to address gaps in current knowledge and stimulate policy discussions on the most critical issues associated with the sustainable development agenda, by promoting research that integrates the social, economic, and environmental dimensions of sustainable development. Contributions that inform the global policy debate through pragmatic lessons learned from experience at the local, national, and global levels are encouraged.

The Journal considers articles written on all topics relevant to sustainable development. In addition, it dedicates series, issues and special sections to specific themes that are relevant to the current discussions of the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD). Articles must be based on original research and must be relevant to policy-making.

Criteria for selection of submitted articles include:
1) Relevance and importance of the topic discussed to sustainable development in general, both in terms of policy impacts and gaps in current knowledge being addressed by the article;
2) Treatment of the topic that incorporates social, economic and environmental aspects of sustainable development, rather than focusing purely on sectoral and/or technical aspects;
3) Articles must contain original applied material drawn from concrete projects, policy implementation, or literature reviews; purely theoretical papers are not entertained.