Michael Obersteiner
Principal Research Scholar
Exploratory Modeling of Human-natural Systems Research Group
Advancing Systems Analysis Program
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Biography
Michael Obersteiner is director of the Environmental Change Institute at Oxford University. He first joined IIASA as part of the former Forestry Program in 1993. He was Program Director of the former IIASA Ecosystems Services and Management (ESM) Program until June 2019, where he led and developed the ESM Program from its inception to an inter-disciplinary research cluster of over 100 staff. His background includes the fields of global terrestrial ecosystems and economics, having completed graduate studies both in Austria (BOKU University and the Institute for Advanced Studies Vienna) and abroad (Columbia University, New York, and the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Novosibirsk). His current research at IIASA stretches from modeling robust Earth system management and supporting the FABLE consortium, to economic stress-testing of supply chain networks.Obersteiner has led large scale interdisciplinary research projects in the fields of integrated assessment of climate, energy, and land-use. He is the author of over 300 scientific papers covering a very wide range of science fields. He currently serves in the Climate Overshoot Commission and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)'s international resource panel. In addition, he is a lead convening author of two chapters of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) and a steering member of the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR)'s Global Assessment Report.
Last update: 28 NOV 2023
Publications
Nilsson, S., Jonas, M. , Obersteiner, M. , & Victor, D.G. (2001). Verification: The gorilla in the struggle to slow global warming. The Forestry Chronicle 77 (3) 475-478.
Obersteiner, M. (2001). An institutional analysis of the Russian economy. In: System Analysis in Economics - Proceedings of the 2nd Inter-university Conference, June 2001.
Jonas, M. , Obersteiner, M. , & Nilsson, S. (2000). How to Go From Today's Kyoto Protocol to a Post-Kyoto Future that Adheres to the Principles of Full Carbon Accounting and Global-scale Verification? A Discussion Based on Greenhouse Gas Accounting, Uncertainty and Verification. IIASA Interim Report. IIASA, Laxenburg, Austria: IR-00-061
Obersteiner, M. , Jonas, M. , Nilsson, S., Shvidenko, A., & Gluck, M. (2000). If You Act Locally and Compute Globally What Is the Optimal Comprehensiveness of the Reference Carbon System? A Note on Decision Making under Changing Properties of Total System Errors of Full Carbon Accounting (FCA) and Partial Carbon Accounting (PCA). IIASA Interim Report. IIASA, Laxenburg, Austria: IR-00-065
Obersteiner, M. , Jonas, M. , & Nilsson, S. (2000). The Political and Economic Costs of a Fully Verifiable Kyoto Protocol. IIASA Interim Report. IIASA, Laxenburg, Austria: IR-00-062