Our History

Incorporating and succeeding both the MIT Center for Global Change Science and the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change on July 1, 2024, while adding new capabilities, the MIT Center for Sustainability Science and Strategy aims to produce leading-edge research to help guide societal transitions toward a more sustainable future. Drawing on the long history of MIT’s efforts to address global change and its integrated environmental and human dimensions, the center is well-positioned to lead burgeoning global efforts to advance the field of sustainability science, which seeks to understand nature-society systems in their full complexity. This understanding is designed to be relevant and actionable for decision-makers in government, industry and civil society in their efforts to develop viable pathways to improve quality of life for multiple stakeholders.

Center for Global Change Science

Directed by MIT EAPS Professor of Atmospheric Sciences Ronald Prinn since its inception in 1990, the Center for Global Change Science (CGCS) was an independent center in the School of Science that also involved researchers from the School of Engineering. Building on 60-plus years of work on weather and climate at MIT, the center’s meteorologists, oceanographers, atmospheric chemists, hydrologists, ecologists and satellite specialists aimed to form a better understanding of earth’s climate while facilitating the prediction of climate change.

In its quest to improve scientific understanding of the global climate system, Prinn realized in the CGCS’ early days the need to better incorporate the human system (e.g., population, GDP, energy use, etc.) into analysis.

Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change

Joining hands with environmental economist/MIT Sloan School of Management Professor Henry Jacoby, the two formed the Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change in 1991. Founded jointly with the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research, the Joint Program was a partnership of the Center for Global Change Science and the MIT Energy Initiative, with participants from all five MIT Schools. The program combined natural and social sciences through the MIT Integrated Global System Modeling (IGSM) framework, which couples economics, climate physics and chemistry, and land and ocean ecosystems to estimate uncertainty in predictions about the environment and economy, and to analyze proposed policies.

Using the IGSM and other modeling tools, Joint Program researchers worked to advance a sustainable, prosperous world through scientific analysis of the complex interactions among co-evolving, global systems. To help nations, regions, cities and the public and private sectors confront critical challenges in future food, water, energy, climate and other areas, the program’s integrated team of natural and social scientists produced comprehensive global and regional change projections under different environmental, economic and policy scenarios. These projections helped decision-makers to assess impacts, and the associated costs and benefits of potential courses of action.

Co-directors of the program included Prinn and Jacoby, and Sloan School of Management Senior Lecturer Emeritus John Reilly. Prinn was the sole director at the time of the program’s transition to the new center.