The Cercedilla Manifesto: Advocating for more environmentally and socially sustainable research meetings

By Raquel Guimaraes, postdoc in the IIASA World Population Program, and Debbora Leip, an alumnus of the IIASA Advanced Systems Analysis Program

IIASA researcher Raquel Guimaraes and former research assistant Debbora Leip encourage the support of the Cercedilla Manifesto, arguing that it is high time for the scientific community to take responsibility and set an example by making research meetings more sustainable.

© La Fabrika Pixel S.l. | Dreamstime.com

The research community widely agrees that strong action is needed to counteract the climate crisis that is currently taking place. Nevertheless, scientists regularly meet at conferences that are often far from sustainable. Problems range from participants flying to attend events, to unnecessary gadgets and gifts handed out at the meetings, and unsustainable catering at conference dinners. In light of the current public debate on environmental and social sustainability, we call on scientists to take a leading role in changing their work practices towards more sustainable habits, starting with research meetings.

In April 2020, Alberto Sanz-Cobena and several colleagues published an article titled Research meetings must be more sustainable in Nature Foods. They presented the Cercedilla Manifesto with 12 sustainability decisions as guidelines for organizers and attendees of research meetings (see Figure 1). The starting point of the manifesto is to question whether a physical meeting is indeed necessary. If organizers decide that it is, there is still the question of whether each single attendee really needs to physically join the conference. Often, remote participation can be equally efficient if a technical solution is provided by the organizers. Furthermore, if a decision to conduct a physical meeting is taken, organizers have to consider what food will be served.

The authors state that excessive amounts of food and food waste are very common at meetings, which makes a change of mindset towards better food management very important, not only for climate change, but for many other environmental threats. In our opinion, this point has so far been neglected in public debate.

Figure 1: Twelve points to enhance the sustainability of research meetings as proposed by the Cercedilla Manifesto (Sanz-Cobena et al., 2020), which is based on a co-creative approach to the production, provision, and consumption of food and services at scientific meetings, and is inspired by Sustainable Development Goal 12 (See also: https://www.openpetition.eu/petition/online/cercedilla-manifesto-research-meetings-must-be-more-sustainable)

Given the urgency for climate change action and the need for individuals to play an active role – with research scientists taking the lead – we assert that it is urgent to start changing our habits and setting an example regarding environmental and social sustainability in research meetings. Indeed, many of us take it for granted that to meet and discuss our work, we must travel. Most attendees do not even question that unnecessary gadgets and gifts are distributed or that opulent dinners are provided.

We hope that the Cercedilla Manifesto will raise awareness about the fact that good scientific output often does not require a physical meeting by providing a conceptual framework for change in this regard. If we support the manifesto, we stand a chance to lower the barrier to dare deviating from currently applied practices. The 12-sustainability decisions were designed by specialists to serve as a reference for anybody who wishes to organize/attend a sustainable meeting.

In the current situation brought about by the global COVID-19 crisis, almost everybody has experienced that remote conferences are not only possible, but also efficient – sometimes even more so than a physical meeting would have been. First, it saves time in terms of travel. Second, it may be more inclusive by allowing people to attend, who would not have had the opportunity to join otherwise, be it for financial, family, or other reasons. In addition, remote meetings provide additional features, like a chat function that could add another discussion layer.

Of course, remote meetings also have their limitations: informal in-person meetings during coffee breaks, for example, can enhance networking and free discussions, and sometimes contribute significantly to a meeting’s outcome. Virtual meetings also face several other challenges, such as participation by attendees from different time zones, or poor internet connections. These issues could however easily be addressed by spreading the meeting over more days, in such a way that the need for attendance outside of acceptable time slots is minimized, and by investing saved traveling costs into better equipment.

Let us learn from this experience and not go ‘back to normal’ after the COVID-19 crisis. We should take this as an opportunity to speed up change and tackle the other global crisis of climate change!

You can find the petition at openpetition.eu/!cercedillamanifesto. We encourage you to share and support this initiative.

References:

Sanz-Cobena A, Alessandrini R, Bodirsky BL, Springmann M, Aguilera E, Amon B, Bartolini F, Geupel M, et al. (2020). Research meetings must be more sustainable. Nature Food 1, 187–189.  DOI: 10.1038/s43016-020-0065-2

Frisch B, & Greene C (2020). What it takes to run a great virtual meeting. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2020/03/what-it-takes-to-run-a-great-virtual-meeting?ab=hero-subleft-3

Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of the Nexus blog, nor of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis.

Representing IIASA at the 2019 Centennial AGU Fall Meeting

By: Florian Hofhansl, postdoc in the IIASA Ecosystems Services and Management and Evolution and Ecology Programs

Florian Hofhansl shares his experience on presenting the wildfire climate impacts and adaptation model (FLAM) at the Google Exhibition Booth at the 2019 American Geosciences Union meeting held in San Francisco 9-13 December.

© Florian Hofhansl | Florian presenting the wildfire climate impacts and adaptation model (FLAM) at the Google Exhibit Booth.

The American Geosciences Union (AGU) Fall Meeting is the largest international Earth and space science meeting in the world. AGU is a great place to reconnect with colleagues as well as to build-up new professional relationships. The 2019 conference marked its Centennial in San Francisco, the home of the AGU Fall Meeting for more than 40 years, and thus I gladly took the offer to give a presentation about FLAM at the Google Exhibit Booth.

It was an honor to represent IIASA by presenting FLAM and discussing its implementation on the Google Earth Engine platform with experts face-to-face on-site. Right after the presentation I ran into a former YSSPer Sarath Guttikunda, who indicated that his experience in the IIASA Young Scientists Summer Program (YSSP) had a profound influence on his professional and personal life.

Another highlight of this year’s centennial conference edition was a presentation by Cesar Terrer, winner of the Peccei Award with Honors from the 2016 YSSP, who was invited to present a young scientists view of the future. His talk entitled “The future of earth vegetation under rising CO2” was featured in a special lighting talk session.

I have been attending the Fall Meeting since 2012 and will continue to attend this meeting for the foreseeable future as it is a great place to network with colleagues and embrace the joy of science with the community. Over the years, I keep on being inspired by other researchers filled with new perspectives, and have participated in scientific discussions that we hope will make our planet more sustainable.

© Florian Hofhansl | Florian presenting a poster about tropical plant functional traits at AGU19.

More about Florian Hofhansl’s research can be found here: https://tropicalbio.me/blog/.

Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of the Nexus blog, nor of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis.

What matters more in preventing adult deaths in India?

By Nandita Saikia, Postdoc Research Scholar at IIASA

What matters more when it comes to preventing unexpected and tragic adult deaths, between the ages of 15 and 60, in low- or middle-income countries?  Is it wealth? Or education?

With the advent of demographic and health surveys (DHS), empirical studies documented that the education level of mothers matters more than the wealth of the household when it comes to preventing deaths among children in these countries. However, the same question largely remained unanswered for adults, as such surveys rarely collect information on adult deaths and the socioeconomic status of the dead individuals. In these countries, in general, death registration systems are poor, which again hinders scientific studies addressing this issue.

© Donyanedomam | Dreamstime.com

One possible solution is the clever use of indirect methods or models on census and survey data, developed by demographers to derive rates from limited, deficient and defective data.  These methods use indirect information collected by surveys for a different purpose. For example, by using women’s siblings’ survival status, one can estimate maternal mortality, or by using women’s widowhood status, one can estimate male adult mortality.

In our recent study on India, we used one such method, called the Orphanhood method, to document life expectancy differences in adulthood by important socioeconomic characteristics. Because of the reasons mentioned above, there is hardly any scientific evidence on life expectancy differences by education or economic status in India, a country with exceptional cultural and socioeconomic diversity. The importance of studying adult mortality disparity in India also lies in the fact that India experiences relatively higher adult mortality than some of its neighboring countries with similar level of economic development. India’s official statistics shows that adult females belonging to the northeastern state of Assam have more than two times the mortality risk of adult females belonging to the southern state of Kerala. In addition, because of drastic reduction of under five deaths in India in recent years, more and more premature deaths in India will occur in adult age in near future.  We used adult parental survival data from a nationally representative large-scale survey, called the India Human Development Survey, 2015-2016, to estimate life expectancy at age 15 in 1998-1999.

We found that lower levels of education of the deceased adults or their offspring, leads to more disparity than any other socioeconomic characteristic, including income status of the offspring, caste, or religion. Literate adults of both sexes at age 15 lived about 3.5 years more than that of their illiterate counterparts. On average, parents of children educated to higher-secondary level (and above) gain an extra 3.8-4.6 years of adult life compared to parents of illiterate children. We found that disparity in adult life by caste and religion is much smaller than disparities arising from educational attainment. For example, female Hindu adults lived 1.3 years more than female non-Hindu adults and male Hindu adults lived 0.9 years more than male non-Hindu adults.

One inherent limitation of indirect demographic methods is that they cannot provide estimates in the most recent years. Despite our estimates referring to a time period about twenty years ago, they are still crucial, as this kind of disparity in adult deaths does not disappear in such a short time span. Our results suggest that investing in education can be more rewarding than anything else to prevent untimely deaths, and to prevent inequalities across population subgroups. Meanwhile, we suggest including appropriate indirect questions in surveys or censuses to track survival status by social group or small geographical area until vital registration systems in countries such as India become fully functional.

Reference:

Saikia N, Bora JK and Luy M (2019). Socioeconomic disparity in adult mortality in India: Estimations using the Orphanhood method. Genus DOI: 10.1186/s41118-019-0054-1 [pure.iiasa.ac.at/id/eprint/15730/]

 Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of the Nexus blog, nor of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis.

Rescuing the world from drowning

By Julian Hunt, IIASA postdoc

Possible location where the barriers could be installed © Anna Krivitskaia | Dreamstime.com

Sea level rise is one of the most challenging impacts of climate change. The continued rise in sea levels, partially caused by the melting of the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica, will result in large scale impacts in coastal areas as they are submerged by the sea. Locations not able to bear the costs of implementing protection and adaptation measures will have to be abandoned, resulting in social, economic and environmental losses.

The most important mitigation goal for sea level rise is to reduce or possibly revert carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Given the time lag between emission reductions and the impacts of climate change, new adaptation measures to reduce sea level rise should be proposed, developed and if possible, implemented.

A proposal that I developed during my D.Phil degree ten years ago, which resulted in a paper on the Mitigation and Adaptation to Global Change Journal1, shows that submerged barriers in front of ice sheets and glaciers would contribute to reducing the ice melt in Greenland. Edward Byers and I propose the construction of ten barriers at key glaciers in Greenland to stop the flow of warm salty ocean water reaching glaciers in Greenland and Atlantic, which are the main contributors to ice melting. This could reduce sea level rise by up to 5.3 meters at a levelized cost of US$275 million a year. The cost of the barriers is only a fraction of the estimated costs of adaptation measures to sea level rise around the world estimated to be US$1.4 trillion a year by 21002.

The barrier consists of several plain sheet modules of marine grade steel around 200 mm thick connected to cylindrical steel tubes with air inside to keep the barrier floating. The depth of the barriers varies from 30 – 500 meters and the required length to stop the sea water from entering the fjords, where the glaciers are located. As no such barrier has been developed before, we propose three main steps for the construction of the barrier:

  1. The barrier components should be transported to the designated location during the summer, when there is no ocean ice cover and the access to the location of the barrier is less challenging. Also during the summer, mooring structures should be added.
  2. During the winter, the barrier is assembled over the frozen ice cover.
  3. During the next summer, the ice cover will melt again and the barrier will float above the place where it is should be fixed. The mooring chains attached to the barrier will pull the barrier into place, using the mooring structures in the ground.

The concept of reducing the contact of seawater and glaciers to reduce ice sheet melting was first published by Moore in Nature3, and Wolovick in The Cryosphere4 with the construction of submerged dams. A graphic representation of the concept is presented in Figure 1. As you can see the barriers should be positioned just after the glacier cavity, where the depth required for the barrier would be the smallest. Our cost analysis shows that using submerged barriers would have one or two orders of magnitude lower costs when compared to submerged dams. Additionally, submerged barriers could be easily removed, if the need arise.

Figure 1. (a) Proposed location of the submerged barrier or dam, (b) submerged barrier characterizes, (c) submerged dam characterizes.

There are several issues involving the implementation of these barriers that should be considered before they are built. The reduction of ice melt in Greenland glaciers will contribute to an increase in seawater temperature and salinity of the Arctic Ocean, which will have a direct impact on the region’s biosphere, climate and ocean currents. The superficial ice cover in the Arctic will be considerably reduced. This would allow a new maritime route for ships to cross the Arctic Ocean, increase the absorption of CO2 by the Arctic Ocean, due to the increase in the ice free surface area and the cold seawater temperature, and the increase in radiation heat from the Arctic Ocean into space. Ice is a strong thermal insulator. Without the Arctic Ocean ice cover the temperature of the region and the heat radiated from the Earth to space will considerably increase, which could have a higher impact in cooling the Earth than the ice cover’s albedo effect. Thus, the reduction of the Arctic Ocean ice cover could contribute to reducing the overall CO2 concentration of the atmosphere and reducing the Earth’s temperature.

This solution, however, should not be used as an excuse to reduce focus on cutting CO2 emission. If the world continues to warm, not even submerged barriers in front of glaciers would be able to stop ice sheets melting and sea level rise.

References:

  1. Hunt J, Byers E (2018) Reducing sea level rise with submerged barriers and dams in Greenland. Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change DOI: 10.1007/s11027-018-9831-y.   [pure.iiasa.ac.at/15649]
  2. Jevrejeva JS, Jackson LP, Grinsted A, Lincke D, and Marzeion B (2018) Flood damage costs under the sea level rise with warming of 1.5 ◦C and 2 ◦C. Environmental Research Letters DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/aacc76
  3. Moore J, Gladstone R, Zwinger T, and Wolovick M (2018) Geoengineer polar glaciers to slow sea-level rise. Nature: https://go.nature.com/2GoPcGp
  4. Wolovick M, Moore J (2018) Stopping the flood: could we use targeted geoengineering to mitigate sea level rise? The Cryosphere DOI: 10.5194/tc-12-2955-2018

Learning global-scale modelling in a castle in Europe

Camila Ludovique – personal archive.

By Camila Ludovique, research assistant CAPES/IIASA Sandwich Doctorate

I come from Brazil, more specifically from the Energy Planning Program of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, that postcard city that most of you may have already seen in pictures, with gorgeous mountains beside the ocean, the sunsets…

But, on the ground we have many problems, as do all the major cities in the developing world, including a high increase in the population, about 11 % in the last decade, who require transport services work, housing, leisure and happiness.

However, higher than the increase in Rio’s population was the increase in its automobile fleet, around 110%, to supply the demand for transport in the city. The result: immobility, traffic jam, environment degradation and loss of quality of life. Then, one day I realized: something needs to be done to transform the business-as-usual scenario!

I started to wonder, how can we develop a society that is more sustainable? How can the transport passenger sector play its role in the decarbonization of economy? Moreover, how can we answer these questions?

By building mathematical models, which try to simulate the real dynamic of full economies, to assess different strategies towards a low-carbon transport system. In this way, we can try to help politicians to understand the emissions problem in a quantitative framework. We can build a dialogue, supported by numbers and evidence on the effectiveness of different policies, measures, and actions to reduce CO2 emissions from the transport sector.

Articulating this complex issue in the context of mathematical language allows us to expand the boundaries of our mental models and ideas, define them and generate scenarios to figure out what that means in practice. The models will not  give us the answer – all models are wrong – but they will give us insights that improve our mental models and the mental models of all the people who need to be involved in order for change to happen, so that people are empowered with effective policies with good leverage to go out there and make a difference. This is what makes some models useful.

And that is why IIASA appears in my life…

Choosing IIASA

Here at IIASA we have researchers and expertise from all around the world, allowing us to develop mathematical models to transform science into actions and to achieve better levels of sustainability in our world.

Being a little bit more technical, there are many examples of how and where emissions from transport have been accounted for through modelling approaches, but, roughly, we can say that there are main two types of models – the top-down and the bottom-up approach.

The bottom-up approach builds the model through more desegregated data. This means, for example, that you can differentiate the emissions pattern between the weeks and the weekends, so you can have a better understanding of the behavior and activities of human beings inside your model, which leads to more realistic outcomes.

The top-down approach uses more aggregated levels of indicators, such as the average distance in kilometers traveled per capita of a country in a year, known as PKT in the transport sector. This is just one value to represent the whole population, which doesn’t allow us to see very detailed patterns of human activity, but it allows us to see much further, around the whole globe, and compare how each region may evolve. On the other hand, the bottom-up approach cannot see a big region without losing the capabilities of a desegregated model.

I used to say that one is myopic and the other has astigmatism. How can we solve this dilemma?

Working with both… and that is why IIASA benefits me

The institute has an important and famous top-down model, the Model for Energy Supply Strategy Alternatives and their General Environmental Impact, better known as MESSAGE. It which provides core inputs for major international assessments, such as the IPCC, and here I am – in this castle in Europe, learning how to model in a global scale.

Besides that, I am also developing a bottom-up model that applies big data to assess the urban passenger emissions in Rio de Janeiro, creating a tool that seeks to answer how we can achieve the transition paths to reduce the carbon footprint of the transport sector, and how much it will cost. This will help my country develop strategies towards sustainable mobility and a better quality of life for Brazilians who live in Rio de Janeiro, or those who travel to that wonderful city.

Why apply for the IIASA doctorate program?

IIASA is not in Vienna itself, it is in Laxenburg, a small village south of Vienna, which means if you want to live in the city, you must travel. But, if that is not a problem for you, I really would recommend IIASA for you!

IIASA has good infrastructure, and there are great people from all over the world, all friendly. There are many activities in the summer time, that even offer free beer! There is also the mountain club, the music club, a great park to run in, or walk in, which is full of nature. For sure, it is a good place to live and finalize your long life of studies. Come to make part of this history.

Applications for the 2019 IIASA-CAPES Doctorate Sandwich Program and Postdoctoral Fellowship Program opened on 1 September 2018 and will run until 15 October 2018. Candidates have to apply to both CAPES (on the CAPES website) and IIASA. Successful applicants will be informed of the selection results by mid-December 2018. Selected candidates are expected to take up their position at IIASA between March and October 2019.

Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of the Nexus blog, nor of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis.

 

My experience as a postdoc at IIASA

Julian Hunt – personal archive.

Julian Hunt is a postdoc at IIASA and part of the Brazilian Federal Agency for Support and Evaluation of Graduate Education (CAPES) scheme. 

My postdoctoral research consists of looking at the world potential and costs of storing energy and water with large-scale pumped-storage plants. This consists of developing computational models using world topographical and hydrological data to develop all possible projects in the world. The results from my research could then be used by countries to analyze the viability of building seasonal pumped-storage for short, medium, and long-term energy storage needs and to improve the water management of the country.

I first heard about IIASA at the Vienna Energy Forum in 2010, when I was doing an internship at UNIDO. I got the impression that IIASA was a major contributor to the science that supports major claims by the UN. This led me to start reading about IIASA’s projects and follow its research. I did not think twice when I received an invitation to apply for the IIASA-CAPES fellowship, which gave me a chance to join the institute and develop my own high impact research. One thing that might stop Brazilian people from applying for this scholarship is because the native language in Austria is German. However, IIASA’s working language is English and in Vienna most people speak English.

IIASA focuses on applied and high impact research at a global scale. Prior to my experience at IIASA, I used to develop new technologies looking only at one or a few cases studies. This limited the research to a small readership, which would think that the technology could only be implemented in one location. With the experience I had at IIASA, I learned to combine my technological expertise with computer modelling and Geographic Information System in most of my work. This considerably increased the readership and impact of my research, and citations of my papers.

Working at IIASA you can focus only on your research. Normally when doing research at universities you might have to give lectures and supervise students. This reduces the important focus on research. At IIASA the main activities are to research, publish articles and scientific reports, present your work at conferences, collaborate with other research institutes, develop projects and so on. The main activities of a researcher. Similarly to universities, there is always finger food (free lunch) available, but the quality is much better.

IIASA is located close to Vienna, which is a beautiful, lively, and affordable and city. Vienna was voted the best city to live in the world and I agree with this. Another important aspect is the social life. IIASA has a very active social life, which includes regular events and parties, different societies (music club, running club), an active Staff Association (STAC) and the possibility of making friends from around the world. Becoming IIASA alumni will also open doors for your future. For example, the Young Scientists Summer Program (YSSP), brings around 50 of the best researchers in the world every year to IIASA. This results in a large network of IIASA alumni researchers.

I highly recommend that researchers, fluent in English, who want to give a huge boost to their research career, learn a lot of valuable methodologies, solve holistic and complex problems, make good friends, and increase their network should apply for a research position at IIASA.


Applications for the 2019 IIASA-CAPES Doctorate Sandwich Program and Postdoctoral Fellowship Program opened on 1 September 2018 and will run until 15 October 2018. Candidates have to apply to both CAPES (on the CAPES website) and IIASA. Successful applicants will be informed of the selection results by mid-December 2018. Selected candidates are expected to take up their position at IIASA between March and October 2019.

Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of the Nexus blog, nor of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis.