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The IIASA-ISC Resilient Food Systems report looks at the vulnerabilities in the food system and recommends changes to move forward through COVID-19 recovery plans that prioritize society’s least protected.

The IIASA-ISC Consultative Science platform has engaged transdisciplinary global thought leaders to produce four reports that focus on a more sustainable pathway to a post COVID-19 world. This blog post looks at the report on Strengthening Science Systems.

Elena Rovenskaya speaks at the high-level Government After Shock Global Forum to help inform a global dialogue on systemic change needed beyond COVID-19 crisis.

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.

The IIASA-ISC Enhancing Governance for Sustainability Report identifies the lessons learnt from the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic in relation to upgrading risk governance.

IIASA Director General Albert van Jaarsveld spoke at the Using Science for/in Diplomacy for Addressing Global Challenges (S4D4C) project final networking meeting “Addressing Global Challenges Together: the Role of Science Diplomacy”.

World Population and Just Societies Program Director Raya Muttarak will talk on 9 April at the webinar on Population, Food and the Environment co-organized by the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population (IUSSP) and Population Association of America (PAA).

The INQUIMUS workshop has been postponed to Winter 2021. IIASA’s Population and Just Societies Program together with the Advanced Systems Analysis Program will host the INQUIMUS workshop series entitled Risk management and Loss & Damage: What are suitable approaches for assessing climate-related (residual) risks?". The workshop will focus on the pressing issue of climate-related risks that may go beyond social and physical limits for adaptation.

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

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.

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.

IIASA researchers present their latest findings on the demographic aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

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.