Its main focus is on background information, analyses, and solutions of environmental and sustainability problems.

GAIA follows the Green Road to Open Access: Authors can archive their article for free public use on personal websites and/or in any open access repository immediately after publication (no embargo period).

Authors retain copyright: All articles are published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution license CC BY 4.0.

The journal contains the following sections: In 2014 the GAIA Masters Student Paper Award was established.

It recognizes outstanding results from young scientists in the field of environmental and sustainability research.