The urgency of accelerating our research contributions at this halfway point in the 2030 Agenda has mounted when we consider the magnitude of work that remains to make the SDGs a global reality.The Covid19 pandemic increased this urgency by erasing approximately four years of progress on SDG#1(End poverty in all its forms everywhere),and further,25 percent of the world’s population now live in conflict-affected countries. Even achieving several of the key water and sanitation targets that makeup SDG#6 by 2030 is now estimated to require a 4-fold increase in the rate of progress. Though these two journals have published research advancing multiple SDGs (and MDGs), in this Virtual Issue (and the upcoming Special Issue), we focus on papers accelerating research and data collection to achieve the following SDGs closely aligned with several of the journals’ scopes.

Environmental Research, Sustainable Development, SDGs