IIASA’s CAT Research Group joined the UN ECOSOC Partnership Forum 2025’s event: Global Challenges Action Innovation, Emerging Technologies & the Power of Partnerships

In recent years, the impact of global challenges and polycrises has become more visible. The large number of related policies and research stands as testimony to this visibility and the urgent need to address these issues. From climate change to economic and social problems, there has been a significant effort to craft new policies and agreements over the past decades. UN climate agreements, UN sustainability goals, and initiatives by G20, BRICS, G7, and other international groups are examples of these international efforts (e.g., G20's Global Land Initiative and Blue/Ocean-Based Economy, BRICS's Clean Rivers Programme and PUESI, G7's 2030 Nature Compact and PGII).

Even though the adopted policies and solutions have positively impacted the advancement in addressing these global issues, the speed of this progress is not as fast as the speed at which these issues are creating impacts and posing challenges. As such, the search for more effective solutions and policies is an ongoing effort, especially given the need to address the dynamic nature of societal challenges.

IIASA ASA’s Cooperation and Transformative Governance Research Group (CAT) group has been developing innovative solutions in policymaking to tackle global issues. For instance, the CAT group has been developing the social intelligence mining tool to make policymaking more inclusive and adaptable. We're focusing on AI-based methods to get a better and up-to-date understanding of people’s perceptions and societal issues as they come up in conversations.

On 5th February, Nadejda Komendantova, the CAT research group leader, was invited to give a talk at the "Global Challenges Action Innovation, Emerging Technologies & the Power of Partnerships" event, a side event to the "UN ECOSOC Partnership Forum 2025.” The event was organized by IAAI-GloCha in collaboration with the Austrian Mission to the UN in NY, the Bahamas Mission to the UN in NY, the Council of Global Change, and the UN Environment Early Warning and Data Analytics Branch. The event was aimed to explore "Global Challenges, Action Innovation, Emerging Technologies & the Power of Partnerships."

In her talk, Nadejda Komendantova shared insights on “AI & Emerging Technologies as Enablers of Global Challenges Action.” She demonstrated how AI-based solutions can help policymakers gain a better understanding of society and how these solutions can lead to the creation of more effective policies and sustainable solutions.

Read more about Social Intelligence Mining here and here.

Read more about the Global Challenges Action Innovation, Emerging Technologies & the Power of Partnerships here and here.

Read more about the UN ECOSOC Partnership Forum 2025 here.