Seite - 28 - in options, Band summer 2017

Institute news 28 www.iiasa.ac.at news at iiasa options ◼ summer 2017 IIASA researchers launch women in science club Back in the 1970s when IIASA was founded, women made up only a tiny proportion of the scientific staff. Since then, the institute has grown much more diverse and in recent years the number of female scientists has been increasing rapidly. Yet both within and outside IIASA, women still face unique challenges in scientific careers. The new Women in Science Club, launched in spring 2017, is a scientist- led effort to help women at IIASA rise to those challenges and succeed in their careers. Inspired by discussions with former Finnish president Tarja Halonen who visited IIASA in summer 2016, the club grew out of an ongoing conversation at the institute on gender balance and diversity. It was founded by two researchers in the Ecosystems Services and Management Program, Olga Turkovska and Amanda Palazzo, in collaboration with Anni Reissell, who leads the Arctic Futures Initiative. “Initially the club started as a platform to bring more female speakers to the institute, but it has grown into something bigger,” says Turkovska. “The goals of the club are to promote, support, and offer encouragement for women connected to science at IIASA,” says Palazzo. “While we also aim to amplify the scientific contributions of women, our club is open to all genders and backgrounds. We want to host discussions, lectures, and seminars that will highlight scientific insights by female researchers, as well as provide career development opportunities and trainings, and a support network to discuss challenges facing women in science.” KL blog.iiasa.ac.at/diversity-16 Major project to empower tropical forest restoration In order to limit climate change, protect the environment, and provide food for a growing world population, sustainable land use is critical. The new RESTORE+ project, launched in April 2017, takes aim at the issue in Indonesia and Brazil, two IIASA member countries where the issue of land-use change is of critical policy importance. The project, which will be funded for five years by the German International Climate Initiative, will also extend to the Congo basin, encompassing all three major tropical forests in the world. Restoration of marginal and degraded land can bring multiple benefits, such as reducing greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation, protecting and increasing biodiversity, as well as economic benefits for local areas. Yet the issue is multifaceted and complex, and even the definitions of marginal and degraded land, as well as restoration, are seen very differently by different interest groups and in different regions. The IIASA-led project brings together 10 partners from around the world, creating a new network of expertise in modeling as well as community engagement. “Assessing restoration potential of tropical degraded areas is a major two-fold challenge at the moment. Degraded areas have yet to be identified and agreed upon. Moreover, we need more knowledge on the implication of restoring these areas, not just from the environmental perspective but also what it means to the surrounding people, the food- land-energy nexus, or the broader economy,” says IIASA Ecosystems Services and Management Program Deputy Director Florian Kraxner, who leads the project. KL www.iiasa.ac.at/news/restore-17