Press releases

A new IIASA-led study finds that expanding street green space can reduce urban heat stress in cities worldwide, but even ambitious greening efforts are unlikely to offset a significant share of the additional heat expected under climate change. Instead, the research shows that street greenery should be part of a broader portfolio of urban adaptation measures.

A new IIASA-led study examines growing critiques of how global climate mitigation scenarios address equity and justice and identifies key conditions for fair, feasible, and politically credible climate action.

Multiple Earth system components appear closer to destabilization than previously believed, putting the planet at increased risk of a “hothouse” trajectory driven by feedback loops that can amplify the consequences of global warming, according to new research.

A new study sheds light on how farmer-led collaboration can help create the conditions to address biodiversity loss in agricultural landscapes. The research looks at “farmer clusters” – groups of farmers working together across landscapes to support biodiversity-sensitive farming – and explores how these collaborative initiatives evolve over time, what shapes their success, and why some mature more effectively than others.

End of January saw the launch of the new EU-funded ATMOPOLIS project, an innovative study that integrates environmental and social sciences to understand how air and noise pollution exposure affect citizens across European cities and propose actions to help improve their quality of life. IIASA researchers are leading a work package to develop an integrated decision support tool for cities.

IIASA researchers explored why mortality among adults of working age remains high in India alongside rapid economic growth, finding that education – at both individual and community levels – is more strongly associated with lower premature mortality than income or household wealth.

Within the next few decades, intensifying heatwaves could expose a significant share of Europe’s cattle to dangerous levels of heat stress. New research maps where and how millions of animals may be affected by mid-century.

Cities are expected to track sustainability progress with data that are often incomplete, outdated, or available only at national level. New research led by IIASA in collaboration with UN-Habitat finds that citizen science could address these gaps and support nearly 70% of global sustainability indicators, yet is currently used in only 4% of cases.

China’s rising demand for cooling doesn’t have to drive rising temperatures. A new study shows how rapid shifts to cleaner refrigerants and high-efficiency technologies could cut cooling-related climate impacts to near zero by mid-century.