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As environmental, technological, and societal change join forces to disrupt human and planetary health, the world must get better at tracking and responding to a host of emerging challenges, according to a new report from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the International Science Council (ISC).

On 22 July, 2024, a high-level delegation from the Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology (VAST), led by Professor Tran Tuan Anh, visited IIASA to meet with Director General John Schellnhuber and IIASA researchers to discuss ongoing research projects and opportunities.

Join us for the German "IIASA Day" on 17 September at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) or online to learn more about IIASA, explore systems analysis research in different context, and network with experts. 

IIASA Energy, Climate, and Environment Program Director, Keywan Riahi, will be one of the speakers and a participant in a panel discussion at the grand opening of the summer universities Alternative Economic and Monetary Systems and Green.Building.Solutions in Vienna on Monday, 15 July 2024. The event will also be live-streamed.

The Gambia faces significant food availability issues due to low agricultural productivity. IIASA researchers and colleagues used the FABLE Calculator to explore actions to reduce the food supply-demand gap by 2050. The results, published in Food Security, reveal that current cropland will not meet food demand by 2050.

Every year, the IIASA Young Scientists Summer Program (YSSP) hosts around 50 young scientists for three months over the course of the summer to undertake a scientific project within the scope of their PhD on a topic related to the IIASA research agenda. In this Q&A, Carolien Kroeze, current Rector Magnificus of Wageningen University and 1991 YSSP participant, recounts her IIASA experience.

In May, IIASA Director General John Schellnhuber and Head of Communications and External Relations Barbara Kreissler traveled to Washington DC for a series of meetings with members of the US IIASA Committee and other key stakeholders. The trip aimed to strengthen relationships and explore new opportunities for collaboration.

Join IIASA at the Vienna Hofburg on 20 June 2024 for the AUSTRIAN WORLD SUMMIT Solutions Expo, part of one of the world’s largest climate conferences. 

The 2024 State of Carbon Dioxide Removal report finds that around 7–9 billion tonnes of CO₂ per year will need to be removed by mid-century from the atmosphere if the world is to meet the 1.5°C Paris Agreement target. The authors stress that reducing emissions is the primary way to achieve net-zero, but Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) has a critical role to play.

IIASA Director General John Schellnhuber gave a lecture on "Surviving the Anthropocene and Securing Human Well-being in the 21st Century" at the Austrian Embassy in Washington D.C. during his visit to the United States. 

Eco-theater strives to create science-based work in the context of our new climate reality toward a collective goal of environmental justice. The piece "End to Begin", shaped with insights from IIASA, provides a place to bid farewell to the old and welcome the future's significance. The pre-premiere took place as part of the Beyond Growth Conference in Vienna.

Recent research assessed that many interactions between climate tipping elements are of a destabilizing nature, leading to the possibility of climate domino effects. In this installment of the Tipping points webinar series, experts will review the current state of literature on tipping point interactions and discuss risks for cascading transitions under current global warming trajectories.

While feeding 8 billion people, current food systems have negative impacts on the environment, human health and on social equality. Join us for this webinar where experts will present key leverage points to mitigate food system impacts and utilize a positive tipping point framework to exemplify how technological innovations, strategic policy design, and human agency can help accelerate a food system transformation. 

Global biodiversity has declined between 2% and 11% during the 20th century due to land-use change alone, according to a large multi-model study published in Science. The projections show that climate change could become the main driver of biodiversity decline by the mid-21st century.

IIASA and the Austrian Academy of Sciences (OeAW) are co-hosting the public lecture "Sternenlos durch die Nacht" (Starless through the night) on the impacts of light pollution on the nocturnal biosphere. Please note that the lecture will be in German.

We are pleased to announce the upcoming Korea University-IIASA symposium titled, Towards integrated approaches for modeling ecosystem material cycles and climate crisis-related disturbances, which will be hosted at IIASA on the margins of the 2024 European Geosciences Union (EGU) conference.

This virtual summer school guides the application of the water resources and hydrological model CWatM (Community Water Model). Participants will run CWatM for a large basin, describe its water cycle, compare with satellite imagery, and calibrate the model. Successful assignments award a CWatM Level A1 certification.

In February 2024, a new EU-funded project kicked off. CROPS – short for curating, replicating, orchestrating, and propagating citizen science across Europe – is a three-year project that brings together six partners from six different countries to develop and demonstrate a modern, inclusive mechanism to support the upscaling of citizen science activities in Europe and beyond.

Join us for this webinar series that aims to advance the knowledge about tipping elements, irreversibility, and abrupt changes in the Earth system. In this installment, experts will delve into the critical tipping points in soil erosion and their implications, particularly in the regions of the Global South where the impacts are currently most pronounced.

The US Committee for IIASA of the National Academy of Sciences will host an online information session on Friday, 5 April 2024 for individuals interested in applying to attend IIASA’s inaugural Summer School on Systems Modeling.