CIRED (International Centre for Research on Environment and Development)

CIRED was founded on the issue of the articulation of development and environmental protection issues following the discussions sparked by the United Nations Conference on Human Development in Stockholm (1972) and in response to the theses of the Club of Rome (Meadows et al., 1972). The work carried out at CIRED is devoted to the study of the relationships between modes of economic regulation and the genesis of the technical universes which structure the relationships between human activities and the natural and constructed biophysical environment. The aim is to understand how institutions, economic incentives and social conventions format technical choices and consumption patterns, then to study the economic and social feedbacks of their environmental impacts.

These questions largely touch on the short term - long term link. This is why the work carried out at CIRED has always been underpinned by an effort at prospective modeling and by a constant dialogue with the natural and engineering sciences. This multidisciplinarity, transcribed into the very composition of the team, has enabled it to take up the challenge of an integrated analysis of the challenges of sustainable development, taking into account the interdependencies between activity sectors and between types of issues (security energy and food, climate, technological risks, economic globalization, poverty reduction).

Since 1996, CIRED has been one of the teams most involved in the work of the International Panel of Experts on Climate Change (IPCC). Four members of the team were authors of the 5th report and 105 different publications were referenced in it. CIRED is also a member of the Energy Modeling Forum (EMF) of Stanford University and the Low Carbon Society Research Network (LCS-RNet). Other partners include the Postdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK, Germany), the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA, Austria), the Universidad Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ, Brazil), l’Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IIMA, India), the University of Science and Technology of Hanoi (USTH, Vietnam) or Resources for the future (RFF, United States of America).