Ecosystems Services and Management
The Ecosystem Services and Management Program (ESM) has built integrated knowledge and data systems to provide a trusted science base for land management policy processes in many global regions. These aim to improve human wellbeing and sustainable management of the Earth’s natural resources. Guiding production and consumption choices that are consistent across scales and compatible with the maintenance of equitable access to multiple ecosystem services, is a scientific challenge that ESM is uniquely positioned to address based on its cluster of citizen science and modularly linked land resource assessment tools.
Selected highlights
A call for climate-smart agricultural policies
The world will have to sustainably feed 10 billion people by 2050, but the ways in which we are currently producing and consuming food is putting pressure on the environment. Several IIASA studies looked into these issues in 2018.
Thawing permafrost and our warming planet
The results of a study by IIASA researchers shows that carbon release from rapidly thawing permafrost is adding to global warming, and that the world could be closer to exceeding the long-term target of the Paris Agreement than previously thought.
Thinking small to ensure global food security
A global data set of agricultural field sizes collected as part of a crowdsourcing project by IIASA researchers, has shed new light on the contribution that smallholder farms make to world food production.
Coal jobs vs. climate change mitigation
Contrary to how it is often portrayed in the public discourse, IIASA-led research has found that the goals of coal sector employment and climate change mitigation can actually be aligned.