Benefits of Systems Analysis for Policy Support: Public lecture

Lecture abstract: Narrowly focused, single-disciplinary science alone cannot adequately underpin policies and solutions to resolve major sustainability challenges. We must rap­idly refocus intellectual and economic investments toward multi-scale, integrated, interdisciplinary ap­proaches that consider social, economic, and environ­mental aspects, that look across and between borders and sectors, and that identify feedbacks or the co - ben­efits of a policy or management decision, before it is made.

One example of this “systems” approach is the Global Energy Assessment (GEA), a multiyear, multidiscipli­nary study (coordinated by IIASA). The GEA links en­ergy to climate, air quality, human health and mortal­ity, economic growth, urbanization, water, land use, and other factors. The GEA scenarios find that energy access for all (by 2050) is possible with co - benefits of limiting warming to 2°C, improving air quality and hu­man health, and stimulating economic growth within a green economy framework.

 Realizing the sustainability goals will require investment in integrated analyses to fully understand the Earth system (human and natural). This must be enabled by substantial growth in public-private part­nerships that stimulate and fund collaboration be­tween social and natural scientists and that engage key stakeholders and the user community at all stages of the research cycle—from inception to implementation.

Last edited: 11 December 2014