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Objectives

The project’s eight core objectives in advancing Paris-compliant action, sustainability, robustness, policy relevance, and transparency.

IAM COMPACT will actively exploit the knowledge produced in recent and ongoing research projects orienting on use and development of integrated assessment models (IAMs), to support the assessment of global climate goals, progress, and feasibility space, as well as the design of the next round of NDCs and policy planning beyond 2030 for the EU, major emitters, and non-high-income countries.

The Objectives (O) of the project include:

O1. Supporting the assessment of global climate progress, needs, and feasibility, and the preparation of national policies for the post-2030 period, toward mid-century climate neutrality based on comparable modelling activities, between global and regional/national scenarios as well as between IAMs and other models, in inter-comparison exercises with extensive sectoral representation (water, energy, transport, industry, AFOLU, etc.).

O2. Placing climate action in a holistic sustainable development framework, working across the broad spectrum of sustainability (e.g., biodiversity, planetary boundaries, human development, institutions, equalities), and exploring the interplay of Paris-compliant mitigation pathways, COVID-19 recovery, and sustainability policies.

O3. Enhancing the robustness of scientific outputs via an interdisciplinary toolbox benchmarking and validating IAM results with sectoral models and coupling modelling with uncertainty analysis tools, and by incorporating social, political, behaviour, and innovation aspects in models with insights from political and social sciences, providing granular and detailed information about barriers, impacts, drivers, and sequencing of transitions.

Ο4. Co-creating policy-relevant modelling via an international policy response mechanism that brings together modelling teams, policymakers, and stakeholders in the EU and countries of diverse economic development and institutional capacity, to scope and link policy/societal needs to models, co-define model scope and scenarios based on pertinent priorities in the climate debate, collaborate in modelling, and enhance mutual learning.

O5. Establishing an integration process that co-produces science and policy prescriptions by adding layers of tools, models, methods, and bodies of knowledge, moving from an interdisciplinary to a transdisciplinary lens (across actors and across sectors), and highlighting a political ecology agenda in the scientific and policy perspectives.

O6. Opening the ‘black box’ of scientific inputs, processes and outputs in line with the principles of open science, ensuring the data used/produced are FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable), documenting model capabilities and specifications for expert and non-expert audiences, including open-source models among the project’s model ensemble, providing open access to data and code produced (new modules, model integration, meta-analysis), transparently mapping outputs onto assumptions, and exploiting/expanding the I2AM PARIS open exchange platform with open databases, briefs, papers, and policy support toolboxes for each exercise.

O7. Engaging in the deep/extreme uncertainty space in the modelling and non-modelling work carried out, toward supporting robust and adaptive decision-making for energy, climate, and sustainability at all geographic scales.

O8. Boosting international cooperation, partnership, and capacity during and after the project, supporting design of climate pledges across the globe while developing scientific and technical capacities in selected countries.