Mitigation of Air Pollution & Greenhouse Gases

The Mitigation of Air Pollution & Greenhouse Gases Program (MAG) explores new ways of delivering cost-effective reductions to air pollution that aid human health, agriculture, and biodiversity, while also yielding positive side-effects for climate change

The Paris climate agreement relies on individual countries ratcheting up their nationally determined contributions to climate mitigation. To aid this process, MAG further refined its integrated approach to identify innovative solutions that deliver multiple near-term benefits while contributing to long-term climate targets.

In 2015, MAG researchers refined methods for: quantifying local health benefits from pollution controls; identifying key emission sources where policy interventions would deliver largest benefits; and improving the representation of their impacts on the climate system. Analyses are of immediate policy relevance for industrialized and developing countries and provide scientific guidance for a range of international policy initiatives.

This work is fully in line with the IIASA mission “to provide insights and guidance to policymakers worldwide by finding solutions to global and universal problems through applied systems analysis in order to improve human and societal wellbeing and to protect the environment.”