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In a new Expert Voices article published in Science, IIASA Population and Just Societies Program Director, Anne Goujon examines the concept of “dejuvenation” – the declining demographic, economic, cultural, and political weight of younger generations – and asks how aging societies can ensure that young people and future generations have a meaningful voice in shaping the decisions that will affect them most.

Corporate climate spending now steers trillions of dollars in transition finance worldwide. Does it drive genuine climate action? Research shows that accounting flexibility alone can make a company's reported emissions vary by roughly a factor of two – enough to appear either as a climate leader or a laggard. A new Perspective in Nature Sustainability proposes developing industry-specific net-zero blueprints to close that gap.

Whether planning flood protection, food production, or financial investments, decisions about climate change should be based on an ensemble of projections as they depend on understanding the full range of plausible futures. IIASA researchers and partners have developed an open-source tool that makes it much faster to generate regional climate and impact projections while capturing the uncertainties that shape future climate risks.

Starting this Friday, 31st of July, the Mowing Quest citizen science campaign invites people across Europe to help improve grassland monitoring. By using the free Geo-Quest app, participants can report mowing events directly from the field and support scientific research with their own observations. The campaign will be open during August and September to test the system capabilities in preparation for a larger 2027 campaign.

As artificial intelligence drives a surge in demand for electricity, concerns are growing about its impact on power systems and climate goals. IIASA researcher Behnam Zakeri argues that the challenge is not simply how to power AI, but how to harness the AI boom to accelerate the transition to cleaner, more flexible energy systems. Drawing on new research, he explores how energy storage can help ease pressure on electricity grids while creating opportunities that benefit both digital infrastructure and the wider energy transition.

How we measure sustainability matters. In a new World View article published in Nature Sustainability, IIASA researcher Dilek Fraisl explores why citizen science and other participatory approaches should play a greater role in developing the indicators and methodologies that guide international action on climate, biodiversity, and sustainable development.

Participants in the inaugural Raiffa Academy return to universities, governments and international organizations with new tools, new collaborators and shared approaches.

What happens when an El Niño forecast reaches social media? Drawing on two recent studies, IIASA researchers Dmitry Erokhin and Nadejda Komendantova explore how the same climate information is discussed differently across online platforms and why those differences matter for climate communication and resilience.

As populations grow and economies develop, the world will need more roads, railways, and other mobility infrastructure, especially in rapidly urbanizing regions. The challenge is to provide that infrastructure while minimizing resource use and carbon emissions – a goal new research suggests is well within reach.

At the inaugural Howard Raiffa Lecture, Avril Haines argued that behavioral science and decision analysis can help governments make more ethical decisions under pressure.

How do wildfires grow into catastrophic events? By tracing the earliest detectable origins of the devastating 2015 equatorial Southeast Asian fires, researchers found that most large fires had multiple origin points and identified the ecological, climatic, and human factors associated with where fires begin. These findings provide new insights that could help improve fire prevention and understanding of fire risks under climate change across tropical landscapes.

Researchers from the Forest Fire Research Division of the National Institute of Forest Science (NIFoS), Republic of Korea, visited the FLAM team in IIASA’s Agriculture, Forestry and Ecosystem Services (AFE) Group, Biodiversity and Natural Resources (BNR) Program, on 8-9 July 2026 to discuss future collaboration on wildfire modelling, aerial firefighting strategies, and megafire response. 

Citizen science is changing how research is done, but fragmented platforms and tools continue to limit its potential. Through the Horizon Europe-funded RIECS-Concept project, IIASA is helping to lay the foundations for a pan-European research infrastructure that will connect citizen science efforts across Europe and strengthen their scientific and societal impact.

Day two at the Raiffa Academy: IIASA Journalist-in-Residence Lisa Palmer on decision-analysis tools that navigate scientific uncertainty, competing interests and the realities of negotiation under pressure.