Seite - 3 - in options, Band summer 2019

POPULATION AGING COULD END THIS CENTURY EDUCATION CRISIS DRIVES FERTILITY PLATEAU NEW MEASURE FOR HUMAN WELLBEING Population aging will almost certainly come to an end in high-income countries before the end of the century, according to new IIASA research that takes a nontraditional view of aging. People today live longer than in the past and also stay healthier longer, making traditional cutoffs for “old age” outdated. Using new measures that account for this shift, IIASA research lays to bed some worries about aging populations. www.iiasa.ac.at/news/aging-19 Recent stalls in declining fertility rates in some African countries are at least partially due to disruptions in girls’ education 20 years earlier, according to recent IIASA research that analyzed data from 18 African countries. The detailed study provides further evidence for previous research showing that women’s education is closely linked to fertility. www.iiasa.ac.at/news/African-fertility-19 Measuring human wellbeing is crucial for evaluating the success of policies. The Human Life Indicator, a new measure developed by IIASA researchers, could replace commonly used measures of human development that are error- prone and incomplete. Unlike any other current measure, the Human Life Indicator takes not only average life expectancy, but also inequality in longevity into account. www.iiasa.ac.at/news/HLI-19 News in brief Written by: Katherine Leitzell Swift climate action could prevent runaway Arctic warming The frozen Arctic tundra holds what has been described as a ticking time bomb for climate change. Permafrost, land that has been frozen for, in some cases, thousands of years, represents one of the largest natural reservoirs of organic carbon in the world. When permafrost thaws, soil microbes start to break down organic material into carbon dioxide and methane, both greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming. This process is one of the great uncertainties in climate models. It is especially worrisome since major methane emissions from natural sources could lead to a feedback cycle, which leads to continued warming and even more emissions as more permafrost thaws. A study by researchers from IIASA, Canada, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, however, shows that swift action to limit human-caused emissions could prevent this cycle of Arctic warming and emissions. IIASA researcher Lena Höglund-Isaksson contributed to the study, which used scenarios to put Arctic emissions into the context of total global emissions. The study is the first to quantify the relative contribution of the two sources to global warming and provides new evidence that meeting the targets set under the Paris Agreement could avoid runaway thawing and emissions from Arctic permafrost. “It is important for everyone concerned about global warming to know that humans are the main source of methane emissions and if we can control humans’ release of methane, the problem of methane released from the thawing Arctic tundra is likely to remain manageable,” says Höglund-Isaksson. “If we can only get the human emissions under control, the natural emissions should not have to be of major concern.” Further info: Christensen TR, Arora VK, Gauss M, Höglund-Isaksson L, & Parmentier F-JW (2019). Tracing the climate signal: mitigation of anthropogenic methane emissions can outweigh a large Arctic natural emission increase. Nature Scientific Reports [pure.iiasa.ac.at/15736] Lena Höglund Isaksson: hoglund@iiasa.ac.at www.iiasa.ac.at 3OptionsSummer 2019