The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has published a Special Report in October 2019 as part of its research in climate change, its causes, potential impacts and response options. The report, Global Warming of 1.5C, provides practical guidelines for limited greenhouse gas emissions to within a safe limit.

The published works of LISER researcher, Gerald Taylor Aiken, are cited several times in Chapter 5: Sustainable Development, Poverty Eradication and Reducing Inequalities. The aim of the chapter is to “…take sustainable development as the starting point and focus for analysis. It considers the broad and multifaceted bi-directional interplay between sustainable development, including its focus on eradicating poverty and reducing inequality in their multidimensional aspects, and climate actions in a 1.5°C warmer world. These fundamental connections are embedded in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). ”

New tools & research is required so society can use to adapt and mitigate to a warming climate. I am honoured to have had my research recognised in such a critical piece of literature.

- Gerald Taylor Aiken

In this respect, Aiken’s research into new community-based experiments, such as Transition Towns (TT) were cited in Chapter 5. TT’s are of specific interest as learning to live well together will only become more important in a climate changed, carbon constrained world. The IPCC report outlines that the only way to reduce global warming to within a 1.5 degree rise, requires “the upscaling and accelerating of far-reaching multi-level and cross-sectoral climate mitigation”. The specific examples that need to be upscaled, grown and encouraged are exactly those initiatives that Aiken researches.