Inaugural lecture Detlef van Vuuren: Integrated Assessment: Back to the Future

Although globally diverse goals have been agreed upon for establishing more sustainable development, most trends do not move in that direction; global greenhouse gas emissions are still increasing and nearly a billion people still suffer from hunger. In his lecture, Detlef van Vuuren discusses how so-called integrated assessment models can be used for exploring pathways towards a more sustainable world by 2050. Such assessments may contribute to better policy, but may also form the basis of further – more focused – scientific work.

More attention for long-term environmental problems

In order to support policy-making regarding issues such as hunger, climate change and biodiversity loss, a better understanding of the long-term development of certain key factors is necessary, such as population growth, energy use and agriculture, as well as how these developments relate to environmental impacts. Integrated assessment models were developed for studying such trends. Using these models, scenarios can be developed that address the question of how the ambitious goals of existing international agreements can be realised. For example, how to ensure that nine billion people have access to sufficient food while we also protect biodiversity? And could this be combined with the ambition to provide everyone with access to clean energy and also reduce climate change? Although analysis shows that such objectives could be achieved in principal, this will require fundamental changes in production and consumption patterns. This seems contrary to the decreasing attention for large-scale environmental and development problems. If society wants to successfully achieve a more sustainable development, much more attention to the possible future paths will be needed.

Special Chair ‘Integrated Assessment of Global Environmental Change’

Detlef van Vuuren is both a project leader at PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency and professor at Utrecht University. In recent years, Detlef van Vuuren has been involved in environmental assessments by various international organisations, such as OECD and UNEP, as author and coordinator. Moreover, he coordinated the development of new climate scenarios for the UN Climate Panel (IPCC) and was involved as author in the IPCC reports on climate science, impacts and mitigation. Detlef van Vuuren is a leading international scientist in the field of global environmental issues, with publications in journals such as Science, Nature, Climate Change and PNAS. In 2011, he received the Award for Extraordinary Contributions to the field of Integrated Assessment.