MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change

The Program's mission is to:

• Improve knowledge of interactions among human and natural Earth systems, with a particular focus on climate and energy, and of the forces that drive global change,
• Prepare quantitative analyses of global change risk and its social and environmental consequences,
• Provide independent assessments of potential responses to global risks, through emissions mitigation and anticipatory adaptation, contributing to improved understanding of these issues among other analysis groups, policy-making communities and the public, and
• Augment the pool of people needed for work in this area by the education of graduate and undergraduate students in relevant disciplines of economic and Earth science analysis and methods of policy assessment.

An interdisciplinary team of natural scientists, social scientists and policy analysts supports this mission, with their efforts coordinated through the maintenance and application of a set of analytic frameworks that integrate the various components of global system change and potential policy response.