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Scientists inform policy makers about different aspects of the pandemic: risks and opportunities, lessons to be learned and pitfalls to be avoided. 

IIASA researcher Alexia Fürnkranz-Prskawetz and IIASA alumnus Verena Winiwarter will speak at this year’s Joint Academy Day between the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the Royal Society of Canada. Discussion will focus on global challenges such as food security, environmental change, poverty, and sustainable responses to Covid-19.

Nadejda Komendantova from the Advancing Systems Analysis Program is invited to speak at the Stakeholders' Consultation organized by UNECE and UNESCO on Innovation for Sustainable Development in Uzbekistan. Her talk is dedicated to innovation policy and risk perceptions from various stakeholders. These risk perceptions are influencing the intention of the stakeholders to lean towards innovation while reflecting on expectations of premiums for risk, delaying deployment of innovation, and increasing the volume of required investment. The talk also contains examples of de-risking policies and risk mitigation measures. 

Policy Brief #28, February 2021. Achieving sustainable development in the Indus basin will strongly depend on the capacity of riparian countries to realize the opportunities that arise when cooperation and joint investments across sectors and countries are embraced.

Policy Brief #27, February 2021. The Zambezi basin has enough resources to meet its development targets but doing so sustainably will require making strategic choices that deviate from the prevailing development paradigm and investing in the outstanding natural capital of riparian countries.

President of the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (EMBRAPA), Celso Moretti, visited IIASA on 12 February 2020.

IIASA demographer Wolfgang Lutz is invited to speak at the Berlin Demography Days on the topic of human capital and how it relates to the challenges faced by the Global South. 

Adopting policies that are consistent with achieving the Paris Agreement and prioritize health, could annually save 6.4 million lives due to healthier diets, 1.6 million lives due to cleaner air, and 2.1 million lives due to increased physical activity, according to new research.

Elena Rovenskaya is invited to speak at the Consultations on the next steps in the operationalization of Euro-Asian transport corridors. These consultations are co-organized by the Sustainable Transport Division of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) and the Office of the Co-ordinator of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Economic and Environmental Activities / Secretariat with the support of the Freight Division of the International Union of Railways.

IIASA is organizing a panel discussion at the 2021 virtual American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) meeting. Drawing on the outcomes of the IIASA-ISC Consultative Science Platform, international experts will discuss the impact of the pandemic on food systems, the recovery process from the 2020 crisis and how to better respond to disasters in the future.

The second workshop of the Foresight Exercise is organized in the framework of the “Emerging trade routes between Europe and Asia” scenario building project. The aim of the second workshop is to identify plausible realizations of Arctic regional factors under two distinctly different global scenarios. These two global scenarios are the most quintessential out of the four scenarios by the World Economic Forum Future Council on Trade and Investment based on the deliberations of the first workshop.

The aim of the second consultation of the Advisory Group “Emerging trade routes between Europe and Asia” scenario-building project is to present several candidate global scenario frameworks preselected by the project team to the Advisory Group Members and to discuss the potential of their regional downscaling to the Arctic. An attempt is made to prioritize one overarching framework within which regional scenarios focusing on shipping in the Arctic should be positioned.

It is clear that COVID-19 has drastically changed our world, but how can we use the lessons learnt to build a more resilient and sustainable future? The International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) and the International Science Council (ISC) have drawn on the combined strengths and expertise of the two organizations to help find a way forward.

The Third meeting of the Big Research Infrastructures for Diplomacy and Global Engagement through Science (BRIDGES) network took place on 20 November 2020 as a webinar.

Nadejda Komendantova from the Advanced Systems Analysis program is invited to give a keynote presentation on "Information technologies and their usage in social media" at the 8th Scientific Conference on Information Technologies for Intelligent Decision Making Support (ITIDS 2020). The conference is organized by the Ufa State Aviation Technical University, the North Caucasus Federal University, and the Ugra Research Institute of Information Technologies in cooperation with the Bashkir Branch of the Scientific Council of the Russian Academy of Sciences on the Methodology of Artificial Intelligence.

IIASA organized two panels at the first online Canadian Science Policy Conference (CSPC) 2020. These offered participants the opportunity to join a live policy simulation about complex Arctic policies and explore horizon scanning, foresight, and scenario mapping as tools to solve the multifaceted issues of tomorrow.

The VEF Virtual Series aims to progress agreed recommendations and deliver policy briefs with action-oriented solutions in targeted locations, and to assist countries around the world to align their recovery efforts in a sustainable way.

What has been driving recent tropical forest loss? A new Geo-Wiki campaign, starting on December 9th, tries to elucidate the answer.

IIASA researchers will participate in the American Geosciences Union Fall Meeting 2020 presenting research on climate adaptation and vulnerability, air quality, Earth sciences, water systems, energy, the impacts of systems and more. 

Options Winter 2020: Q&A with Heide Hackmann, CEO of the International Science Council and IIASA Distinguished Visiting Fellow.