The Basque Center for Climate Change

This fellowship must be completed not later than June 2024

The Basque Center for Climate Change – BC3

is an international research centre created in 2008 on the causes and consequences of climate change. Led by one of the most recognized scientists in the field, BC3 produces multidisciplinary knowledge to support decision making towards sustainable development at the international level.

With a multidisciplinary team, BC3’s mission is to strategically foster co-production of knowledge relevant to decision making by integrating environmental, socioeconomic, and ethical dimensions of climate change.

Research proposals

BC3 is one of the leader institutions in supporting the significant parts of the lifecycle of transdisciplinary climate change research at different scales (from local to global). In the coming years, BC3 will further pursue this mission by continuing the implementation of six objectives:

SO1) Understanding past and future climate changes: BC3 achieves realistic and effective climate policies through activities that are carried on in an integrated manner through four dimensions of integration: observation (field campaigns and development of new methodologies for sampling and recording of observations at extreme and vulnerable environments), theory (conceptual and mathematical modelling of physical phenomena, including development of completely new complex-system models and theories, as well as digital and statistical analysis of records) experiment (BC3’s IzotzaLab: low-temperature science & technology laboratory for innovative microscopic studies of frozen samples -ice cores- and development of new technologies optoelectronics, planetary science, etc.) and understanding (knowledge co-production and transfer through citizen science and the study of indigenous knowledge, collaborations with social groups and researchers of social sciences and humanities) and education (e.g. through the GIGAKU Network).

SO2) Support decision making in the transition to a low carbon society: The global community faces the challenge of reducing emissions without compromising the achievement of the SDGs and efforts to eradicate poverty and inequality. Therefore, decision makers around the world will need to find ways to accelerate the implementation of climate policies based on the best available scientific information, and scientists will need to be prepared to effectively inform these solutions on time. Therefore, it is critical to better understand the challenges, opportunities, risks, and uncertainties associated with a low-carbon, just transition and to support and engage with stakeholders in the evaluation and design of specific actions, in order to successfully achieve these transitions at the time that will be needed.

SO3) Understanding and managing terrestrial systems for sustainability: Terrestrial ecosystems play an essential role in achieving many of the SDGs. Effective land use and conservation decisions require ecological process understanding and consideration of the interplay of social, economic and environmental factors. BC3 explores different aspects related to terrestrial ecosystems adaptation mechanisms and mitigation opportunities for climate change, including reinforcing ecosystems monitoring and experimentation and those that are relevant for socially efficient allocation of land resources in terms of their long-term conservation as well as for their ongoing utilization.

SO4) Support decision making for successful and effective adaptation: Underpinning successful adaptation is the safeguarding of human, animal, plant and planetary health, not as separate entities but as co-constitutive systems. Health, social justice and sustainability will be taken as cornerstones from which to formulate adaptation strategies. BC3 follows an approach of learning from in-depth local and regional case studies and tests ways of how to best support public authorities in integrating climate adaptation considerations into all relevant policies. Adaptation measures, once implemented, require tools for monitoring their success and to detect unintended consequences. BC3 investigates how effective adaptation necessarily requires the view of an evolving complex system, made up of highly interconnected elements that interact across a wide range of spatial and temporal scales.

SO5) Integrated modelling of coupled human-natural systems: To be relevant to policy and decision making, scientific tools must consider the linkages between people and nature – termed “coupled human-natural systems.” ARIES (ARtificial Intelligence for Environment & Sustainability, http://aries.integratedmodelling.org/), an application of semantically integrated modelling technology using Artificial Intelligence (AI), integrates scientific data and models that simulate and integrate environmental and socioeconomic systems, deepening our understanding of the natural world and of how the choices society makes can impact future economic prosperity and environmental sustainability. In the following years development and scaling up of ARIES and its components are foreseen, in terms of complexity in biophysical and social modelling; bridging disciplines, from biophysical to social through agriculture and food security; bridging scales, from process detail and agent behaviour to economic and policy instruments; and, building and delivering new applications online.

SO6) Promoting integrated interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research: BC3 aims to consolidate its current capacities for transdisciplinary science to solve complexities around the foreseen transformations to address the climate crisis while considering interrelated problems (e.g. health, social, economic and environmental crisis).