On Thursday, November 9, Timo Maas, who works at the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL), received his PhD from Wageningen University (WUR). With his dissertation Transforming relations between science, policy and society for sustainable futures? he conducted...
Climate policy is often based on complex energy models. A new paper in Nature Energy proposes ‘model fingerprints’ as a new method to better compare the behaviour of these models. These snapshots of model behaviour allow researchers and policymakers to better interpret...
The European objective to achieve ‘No Net Land Take in 2050’ (NNLT) took spatial planners in the Netherlands by surprise. Other member states, however, have been actively trying to reduce their urban development for years. What can we learn from each other? That was the topic...
Without further implementation net zero targets will not deliver their intended climate mitigation. Many countries have promised to cut their greenhouse gas emissions to almost zero around mid-century, while compensating the remaining emissions: net zero. However many net...
Achieving the stringent global climate target of the Paris agreement, limiting global temperature change to well-below 2 or even 1.5 degrees, requires unprecedented emission reductions of CO2, as well as non-CO2 greenhouse gases, such as methane, nitrous oxide and fluorinated...
The river basins of the European Rhine and the Chinese Yangtze feature similar challenges: environmental pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, biodiversity, urbanisation and climate adaptation. The approaches to these in the river basins can therefore be compared and the...
On Wednesday February 15th 2023, PBL organized 'Ukraine’s housing recovery forum - rebuilding a place to call home’. The aim of the event was ‘sharing knowledge for action’. Why talking about recovery while the war is ongoing? “Recovery requires long-term visioning and the...
It is now almost a cliché to refer to the ‘post-truth’ society, implying a knowledge crisis in science and society. But although this phenomenon is widely discussed, the question of what this means for theories, methods and practices of Integrated Assessment (IA) is yet to be...
A circular bioeconomy can dramatically rein in the fast-growing plastic sector’s climate, pollution, and resource consumption impacts. Under current policies, global plastic production will likely triple by the year 2100. Today, the plastic sector is responsible for almost 5%...
Since the Glasgow climate summit (COP26) governments have made little progress in terms of strengthening short term policies, a new UN Environment Programme (UNEP) finds. Last year all countries promised to strengthen their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) but NDCs...
