Mistra-SWECIA – Swedish Research Programme on Climate, Impacts and Adaptation
Summary
Climate change is a reality and it is important to analyse the effects these changes will have on the environment and on society, as well as investigate how societies will be required to adapt their activities to the altered conditions.
Mistra-SWECIA (2008-2015) was a Swedish, multidisciplinary programme that developed research-based knowledge which is used to support decisions about adaptation to climate change. Mistra-SWECIA built on expertise from several research areas, including climatology, ecosystem science, economics, sociology and political science. The approach was to perform scientifically sound, scenario-based integrated climate, impact and economic analysis and research on the adaptation process. Parallel to, and as one approach to achieving its science goals, the programme engaged with stakeholders within and across different sectors and at a range of scales. By collaborating with Mistra-SWECIA, stakeholders were expected to benefit from focused decision-support and an enhanced capacity to translate scientific information into practical knowledge of direct relevance for decision making.
The main Mistra-SWCIA research programme closed in 2015. The project website, https://www.mistra-swecia.se/, has been relaunched as a blog about climate issues, the environment and research where you are able to read about the climate issues and climate change that the programme members stand for in Sweden today. What research looks like and what we can do to improve our environment are other questions that you can also read more about. The goal is to inform and educate people about our local environment but also about our global and only planet. The only way we can improve the world’s environment is if we do this together, the way there is by spreading education in the subject.
Programme donors and partners
Mistra-SWECIA was funded by the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Environmental Research (Mistra). The programme involved SMHI (The Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute), SEI (Stockholm Environment Institute), Lund University and Stockholm University. SMHI was the programme host.Outcomes and Impacts
The programme resulted in three main outcomes:
– a new strong and cross-disciplinary Swedish research arena, bringing together physical climate sciences, terrestrial ecosystem and carbon cycle science, economics, and social sciences at the international state-of-the-art level;
– strengthened ability of Sweden to manage climate change by means of proactive adaptation on local, regional (sub-national) and national scales;
– building-blocks of a strategy for long-term science-based and stakeholder-oriented operations of a national climate and adaptation dialogue platform.
Mistra-SWECIA’s research focuses on land use and on the ways in which Swedish forests and forestry are affected by climate change and, more generally, how the effects of climate change are relevant to those involved in forestry, agriculture and nature conservation.