News | IIASA

Sustainable Development Goals set seventeen colorful icon.

08 May 2020

Defining a safe and just space for people and planet

A new working group of the Earth Commission, comprising renowned scientists from institutions around the world including IIASA, will investigate future pathways of how humanity might develop sustainably to ensure a safe and just world for all.

07 May 2020

Can we estimate the time until the next recession?

As the world economy is falling into one of the biggest contractions of the last decades, a new study of economic recession patterns finds that the likelihood of a downturn was high even before the onset of the Coronavirus crisis.

30 April 2020

Five years after the Paris Agreement: The gap between promises and implementation

The results of a new study show that achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement will require a deep reduction in global greenhouse gas emissions, ideally by around 40% to 50% by 2030.

29 April 2020

A new approach to measuring inequalities in development

A new study by researchers from IIASA and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology for the first time systematically explored and compared the use of the Human Life Indicator as a viable alternative to the conventional Human Development Index as a means of measuring progress in development.

28 April 2020

New ERC grant to explore making pension policies more fair

The IIASA World Population Program has received a new grant from the European Research Council to explore how to make pension policies more equitable by identifying fair normal pension ages and ensuring new measures of population ageing are up-to-date.

21 April 2020

SAS and IIASA call for crowd-driven artificial intelligence to help track deforestation

On the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, SAS and IIASA join forces to transform crowdsourced knowledge into actionable intelligence to help protect the planet.

21 April 2020

Economic recovery after shutdown could take up to three years

The coronavirus pandemic poses an enormous challenge for the domestic and global economy. Despite the measures taken by the Austrian government, the consequences of the lockdown and partial suspension of global trade flows will be felt for a long time.

City scape of skyscrapers with lights on in the offices by night

17 April 2020

Can sub-Saharan Africa achieve sustainable access to energy for all by 2030?

In 2019, the global population without access to electricity dipped below 1 billion for the first time. This progress has however been uneven, both across and within different regions. A new IIASA study shows that to ensure universal access to affordable, reliable, and modern electricity services by 2030 in sub-Saharan Africa, the pace of electrification must more than triple.

16 April 2020

Returning land to nature with high-yield farming

The expansion of farmlands to meet the growing food demand of the world’s ever expanding population places a heavy burden on natural ecosystems. A new IIASA study however shows that about half the land currently needed to grow food crops could be spared if attainable crop yields were achieved globally and crops were grown where they are most productive.