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On 20 March 2025, IIASA Director General Hans Joachim (John) Schellnhuber delivered a keynote address at the First International Timber Construction Symposium in Berlin. His presentation, titled Climate Plan C: Atmospheric Restoration by Natural Means (Klimaplan C: Atmosphärenreparatur mit natürlichen Mitteln), emphasized the role of timber construction in tackling the climate crisis.

What is a fair way forward after the 1.5°C warming limit of the Paris Agreement has been breached?  In a new study, IIASA researchers explore the concept of ‘net-zero carbon debt’ — a measure for assessing who bears greater responsibility for minimizing the climate overshoot. 

A new report released by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), highlights the urgent need for integrated policies to address air pollution and climate change across Southeast Asia. IIASA researchers contributed as authors of the first chapter, laying the foundation for science-based policy action.

On 19 March 2025, IIASA hosted a virtual workshop with Ethiopia’s Ministry of Innovation and Technology and the National Research Foundation of South Africa. The event explored research and innovation opportunities to support Ethiopia’s strategic development goals, focusing on areas such as climate change, food security, and sustainable energy.

The Agriculture, Forestry, and Ecosystem Services (AFE) Group is pleased to announce that the kick-off meeting for IEA Bioenergy TCP Task 44 will take place on March 25–26, 2025, at IIASA in Laxenburg, Austria. This meeting marks the beginning of a new phase in Task 44’s efforts to advance research on Bioeconomy system integration aspects within the International Energy Agency (IEA) Technology Collaboration Programme (TCP).

Zbigniew Klimont, who leads the Pollution Management Research Group in the IIASA Energy, Climate, and Environment Program, was invited to share the group's expertise in assisting cities to mitigate air pollution at a recent conference co-organized by the Hanoi People's Committee and the Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology (VAST) - the IIASA National Member Organization for Vietnam and its scholarly community.

The Eurasian Carbon Project is deepening its cooperation with Kazakhstan as the country moves forward with national efforts to integrate carbon farming into its climate and land-use strategies.

Over the next few weeks, CircEUlar partners T6 and IIASA will be running a series of online stakeholder workshops. The aim of these events is to explore the future of the four focus areas in a more circular economy: Buildings, Mobility, Digitalisation, and Household Appliances and Waste Management. These sessions have been designed to be an information exchange and a shared dialogue with leading experts in policy, research and industry. 

Join us for sessions featuring inspiring speakers tackling contested issues in the risk and resilience space. The hub proceeds mostly online, with a few events hosted personally at IIASA. A chance to learn, and be part of critical conversations.

As the world faces the growing risk of exceeding the 1.5°C warming threshold, understanding the risks and responses to climate overshoot across different disciplines has never been more urgent.  

Adaptation to climate change is becoming increasingly urgent, yet global assessments still struggle to answer pressing questions: Where will adaptation be most needed? Which actors must adapt, and what barriers stand in the way? These challenges were at the heart of the ‘Adaptation Pathways and Scenarios for Climate Change Research’ workshop, held from 17th to 21st February at the Lorentz Center in Leiden, Netherlands. 

A systems approach to the world highlights structural similarities across diverse domains. With a certain level of analytical abstraction, these similarities allow a unified language for description and analysis of different systems. This universality offers opportunities to transfer concepts, methods, and insights across different disciplinary domains, fostering cross-domain innovation and sense-making.

To make real-world impact, integrating a systems perspective into decision-making necessitates transcending disciplinary boundaries and forging partnerships beyond the scientific community. ASA research engages with policymakers in interactive processes of co-production of theories of change, data, interventions and insights.

People in informal settlements, urban deprived areas, refugee camps, prisons, and war zones can be particularly vulnerable to climate threats and natural hazards. A new study, led by IIASA researchers, explores how policymakers can ease their burden.

In a world where sustainable development and climate change solutions demand urgent action, ensuring that policies are informed by solid evidence is essential. The North Africa Applied Systems Analysis Centre (NAASAC) in Egypt has made this its mission, aiming to build a systemic culture of applied systems analysis for evidence-based policy development.

Want to contribute to the European Union’s climate neutrality target but not sure how? Join the latest Picture Pile campaign as part of IIASA’s LAMASUS project. Help us to identify livestock and grassland management practices from photographs, which will be used to validate a new geodatabase on land use management.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) methods are becoming increasingly important in both science and society. In climate science - where complex biophysical and societal processes interact across diverse temporal and spatial scales, and datasets are often large, heterogenous and incomplete - AI and ML methods offer new powerful solutions.