Humanity has affected virtually every ecosystem on the planet. Over the last 200 years, anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions into the Earth’s atmosphere have altered its radiative properties and are causing global temperatures to rise, which in turn is changing the functioning of the Earth system as a whole. As a result, the 21st century faces environmental changes on local to global scales that require major mitigation and adaptation efforts by society and ecosystems. The causes and effects of global change and the problems and solutions related to it establish increasingly complex interconnections between biogeochemistry, Earth system functions, and socioeconomic conditions. To guide efforts to mitigate and adapt to global change and contribute to policy decisions, it is necessary to generate scientific information in interdisciplinary and comprehensive ways that address the needs of knowledge users and also provide a deep understanding of complex socio-environmental systems.
To respond to these requirements, 12 nations of the American continent met in Montevideo, Uruguay, in 1992, to create the Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research (IAI). In the Declaration of Montevideo, the 12 governments requested that the Institute coordinate, to the best of its ability, international scientific and economic research on the extent, causes, and consequences of global change in the Americas.
Sixteen governments signed the resulting Agreement for the Creation of the IAI, which laid the foundation for the IAI’s role as a regional intergovernmental institution that promotes interdisciplinary scientific research and capacity building to inform decision-making on the continent and beyond. Since the signing of the Agreement in 1992, three other countries have joined the treaty, bringing the IAI to 19 Parties in the Americas that meet once a year as a Conference of the Parties to monitor and direct the activities of the IAI.
Since 2018, the IAI has hosted the Belmont Forum, a partnership of funding organizations, international science councils, and regional consortia committed to the advancement of transdisciplinary science. Please see the Notification on the hosting of the Belmont Forum Secretariat by the IAI Directorate.
