International Institute For Applied Systems Analysis - History

History

In October 1972 representatives of the Soviet Union, United States, and 10 other countries from the Eastern and Western blocs met in London to sign the charter establishing IIASA. It was the culmination of six years’ effort driven forward by both the US President Lyndon Johnson and the USSR Premier Alexei Kosygin. For IIASA it was the beginning of a remarkable project to use scientific cooperation to build bridges across the Cold War divide and to confront growing global problems on a truly international scale.

Clearly, success at bridge building and successful science would go hand in hand. But neither was a foregone conclusion. This was the 1970s, and most research organizations focused on national issues. Few encouraged researchers from different countries or disciplines to work together for the greater good.

To achieve its ambitious research vision, IIASA would have to break down the barriers between nations and disciplines. This it did, building international multidisciplinary teams to confront innumerable global challenges, both long-standing and emerging. For example, a study on water pollution carried out in the 1980s by a team of IIASA chemists, biologists, and economists still forms the basis of modern water policy design in Japan, USA, and the former USSR.

When the Cold War ended, IIASA’s sponsoring countries could have said “mission accomplished” and disbanded the Institute. IIASA had certainly helped foster mutual understanding among scientists from East and West. But it had also done more than this. IIASA had shown the scientific benefits of bringing together different nationalities and disciplines to work toward common goals. Indeed, this approach has been widely imitated, for example, in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme.

So instead of closing in the 1990s the Institute broadened its mandate from the East and West to a truly global focus. Today IIASA brings together a wide range of scientific skills to provide science-based insights into critical policy issues in international and national debates on global change.