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The Amazon forest stores large quantities of the climate-damaging greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO₂). But deforestation, agriculture and rising temperatures bring this nature based solution to a limit. AmazonFACE brings together an international team of researchers aiming to address the question how the Amazon forest will respond to projected future CO₂ concentrations. By using Free-Air CO2 Enrichment (FACE) technology we will generate process based understanding on the functioning of the world’s largest tropical rainforest, and therefore will be able to inform regional policies on climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies.

Sustainable lifestyles, green-tech innovation, and government-led transformation each offer promising routes to make significant progress towards the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Paris Agreement, according to a new study by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), to which IIASA scientists contributed. Contrary to the belief that the path to sustainable development is increasingly out of reach, the results show that humankind has a variety of pathways to depart from its current unsustainable trajectory.

The MEDiate project is designed to help policymakers in decisions on natural disaster risk reduction. This year’s general assembly was held on 24 and 25 October. During this event, IIASA’s CAT team in the project held a serious-game workshop for finding sustainable solutions to natural hazard risk reduction. The workshop guided the participants trough silent negotiation to find a risk reduction solution for city-wide disaster scenarios.

Governments worldwide must urgently commit to reducing annual greenhouse gas emissions by 42% by 2030 and 57% by 2035 in their next Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to avoid surpassing the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C global warming target, warns a new report released by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) today.

IIASA researchers helped to identify three focus areas at the intersection of science and policy, which could foster transformative action to accelerate the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Their priorities include exploiting SDG synergies, modeling long-term policy impacts, and co-developing tools together with relevant stakeholders.

MEDiate hosted a discussion panel, examining different theoretical and practical aspects of reducing the risk of natural hazards while taking into account the interaction among multiple hazards and ever-changing environmental and climatic conditions. In this discussion, CAT research group leader Nadejda Komendantova was invited to share her insights on cooperative policymaking for finding sustainable risk reduction solutions. 

The influence of climate change on migration, both current and future, has garnered significant attention from the public and policymakers over the past decade. A new IIASA-led study has provided the first comprehensive analysis of how climate factors – specifically drought and aridity – affect internal migration.

Over the past decades, researchers have revealed different dimensions of natural disaster risk with great dedication. This diversity in risk dimensions can cause conflict of opinions and interests and calls for a collaborative approach to finding the solution. This year’s Disaster Research Days focused on disaster risk reduction and invited IIASA’s CAT research group leader, Nadejda Komendantova, to share the approach they developed in the MEDiate project.

Following his keynote address at the Austrian Wind Energy Association (AWES), IIASA Director General Hans Joachim (John) Schellnhuber spoke to the industry magazine Windenergie about why we need to step up current climate policy and what climate protection has to do with patriotism.

In the light of new technologies and their serious impact on societies and the environment, and in the rise of global changes in natural hazards, the need for cooperation and shared understanding for shaping the future of disaster risk reduction has become clearer than ever. This year’s Disaster Research Days events are more focused on this goal, and IIASA's Cooperation and Transformative Governance Research Group leader, Nadejda Komendantova, was invited to share her innovative insights.

Felicity Addo, a researcher in the IIASA Integrated Biosphere Futures Research Group of the Biodiversity and Natural Resources Program, received an award for her thesis from the Austrian Association for Agricultural Economics (ÖGA) as part of her work on the LAMASUS project.

Heat-related deaths and diseases are a major concern in Europe amid increasing extended periods of extreme heat. A new study proposes a novel way of quantifying and projecting future vulnerability to heat stress in different areas of a city, providing local decision makers with knowledge for designing more effective adaptation strategies to minimize health impacts of heat stress.

Even if it is possible to reverse the rise of global temperatures after a temporary overshoot of 1.5°C, some climate damages inflicted at peak warming, including rising sea levels, will be irreversible, according to a new study published today in Nature.

Last month, CircEUlar had its third in-person consortium meeting hosted by the University of Groningen at the, very appropriately named, House of Connections. Twenty-eight CircEUlar members from across 12 research organizations met over three days of collaborative working. The meeting was also an opportunity for T6 Ecosystems, University of Groningen and CircEUlar’s sister-project CircoMod, to design, plan and deliver a stakeholder workshop, "Towards Net-Zero through a Circular Economy: the consumer and business perspectives". 

A new study reveals a widespread oversight in forest carbon dynamics measurement and modeling. Most forest carbon models and measurements neglect the carbon flux associated with the turnover of branch biomass, leading to inaccuracies in forest carbon accounting. The study, titled "Overlooked branch turnover creates a widespread bias in forest carbon accounting", was led by Hyungwoo Lim, conducted during his time as a Guest Researcher, in collaboration with his supervisor and co-author, Oskar Franklin, in the AFE group at IIASA.

Recent flood events in Europe have caused huge losses in many countries, including Austria, the Czech Republic, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia. IIASA research shows that while Pan-European emergency aid financing is important to assist countries in coping with large-scale natural hazard induced disaster events, there is a need to think about new ways forward for the size and scope of funding levels as well as bringing fairness and other proactive risk financing instruments into consideration.

Science meets art: On 14 October at 19:30 CET, the future generation (born in 2050 and 25 years old) will visit the Odeon Theatre in Vienna to understand what people will know, do, fear, hope and dream in 2025.  

On 23 September 2024, a distinguished delegation of Heads of Missions from the Latin American region, led by its Dean, Ambassador Juan Francisco Facetti Fernandez, Permanent Representative of Paraguay to the International Organizations in Vienna, visited IIASA to explore avenues for meaningful research collaborations.

After the devastating floods that recently struck Vienna and other areas of Europe, global attention has turned to the need for better tools to combat climate change impacts. President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, also highlighted the need to build a competitive, decarbonized and circular economy, with a fair transition for all as a high-priority objective for this legislature. In this spirit, the Open Earth Monitor project will kick off the second edition of its flagship event in collaboration with IIASA on 2 October.

In Memory of Yuri Ermoliev, an outstanding world-known scientist, more than 35 years contributing his knowledge and experience to IIASA research agenda, IIASA Schoalar and Emeritus, “Pioneer” in Stochastic Optimization, Academician of National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Professor Dr.