Two surveys were held among the Dutch population in the framework of sustainability research at the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (MNP) - one in May 2003 and one in April 2005. In each of the surveys about 2500 respondents were asked to list, in order of importance, 53 societal issues. These issues were graded in four consecutive sorting tasks. Here we present the method used to work out the surveys and the results ensuing. Special attention was paid to estimating uncertainties. The most often cited issues in the top 10 of the 53 were global problems such as pollution of rivers and oceans, the ozone hole, the threat of terrorism, the greenhouse effect, hunger, biodiversity, economical use of oil and gas and good quality drinking water in poor countries. Of the national problems only ‘provisions for the elderly’ and ‘health care’ were cited among the top 10. People’s concern was seen to increase with the scale of the problem. With the exception of ‘threat of terrorism’, most of the 53 issues were seen to have hardly shifted in level of importance between 2003 and 2005. The rise in importance of the threat of terrorism was to be expected after the murder of a well-known filmmaker, Theo van Gogh, and the bomb attack in Madrid. The rise in concern about air pollution was due to the problems around particulate matter and nitrogen dioxides. The decline in concern about greenhouse gases is unusual in view of the increased interest in climate change and the Kyoto agreement.