Press releases

A new report released by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) assessed the biophysical and economic benefits of air pollution policies in Arctic Council countries. The analysis relied on a suite of modeling tools, including the IIASA GAINS model, to project the impacts of increasingly ambitious policy action up to 2050.

The terms “co-creation” and “co-production”, which denote the possibility for laypeople to participate in decision-making processes that affect their lives, have been gaining popularity. A new IIASA-led study explored options for empowering citizens as a driver for moving from awareness about the need to transform energy systems to action and participation.

No less than nine IIASA researchers have made it onto the Reuters Hot List – the media giant’s ranking of the world’s most influential climate scientists – with IIASA Energy, Climate, and Environment Program Director, Keywan Riahi, claiming the top spot.

The Earth Commission laid out its approach to defining a “safe and just corridor for people and planet” in a paper published today in Earth’s Future.

IIASA researchers have used Sentinel 1 satellite imagery from the European Space Agency to produce a map of the extent and year of detection of oil palm plantations in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand that will help policymakers and other stakeholders understand trends in oil palm expansion to inform landscape-level planning.

Can cooperation across sectors and countries help to achieve sustainable development? How do stakeholders in the Indus and Zambezi basins envision the future and how can they make that future a reality? IIASA researchers looked into these questions as part of a large-scale initiative with international partners.

IIASA researchers worked with local stakeholders from the East African Community to explore and co-develop regional water scenarios that can enhance understanding of the up- and downstream water sector interactions in the extended Lake Victoria Basin to facilitate rational water resource planning.

Solar energy is a clean, renewable source of electricity that could potentially play a significant part in fulfilling the world’s energy requirements, but there are still some challenges to fully capitalizing on this potential. Researchers looked into some of the issues that hamper the uptake of solar energy and proposed different policies to encourage the use of this technology.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a blueprint to achieve a better life for all and to ensure that no one is left behind. The partly overlapping and contradictory objectives of the SDGs can however make it difficult to assess overall progress. A group of researchers have proposed a new, tailor-made metric that measures development based on long-term human wellbeing.