Despite 2020’s myriad challenges due to the Covid-pandemic, this Annual Report 2020 attests how hard CIES scholars have worked to make progress on their research on global environmental issues. Next to ongoing projects, our CIES faculty members have also applied their expertise to the Covid-19 crisis. A few weeks into the first phase of the pandemic in Europe, we produced blog posts, podcasts, seminars, interviews in the press, and policy events to reflect on Covid-19 impact on the global environment. Our researchers had to start working remotely and our administrative team had to quickly adapt to this new reality to maintain our stream of activities.

Despite these challenges, the CIES administrative team continued their terrific work in supporting researchers to file research proposals during these exceptional times and 9 research proposals were submitted, out of which 5 were successfully awarded. Among the highlights of this year, we were thrilled to hear about the EUR 1.5 million ERC Grant awarded to Filipe Calvao, Associate Professor in ANSO on the “Future of Mining”. We very much look forward to developing this new area of research with him and his team over the coming years. Our Research Programme on `Agrarian Environment and Food Systems’ initiated a few years ago will also generate much activity in the future thanks to the SNF grant on “Accounting for Nature: Agriculture and Mitigation in the Era of Global Climate Change” awarded to Shaila Seshia Galvin.

The year 2021 promises to be one of new beginnings. Under the leadership of the newly appointed Director of the Graduate Institute, Marie-Laure Salles, the CIES will get the opportunity to reflect on its identity and how it inscribes itself into the Graduate Institute collective project. This offers a renewed perspective for broadening our scope of activities. We will also continue our efforts to better communicate our research results to a broader audience – we launched a few months ago our first new CIES Publication Newsletter – and to pursue our mission to be a trusted resource of research on global environmental issues for the International Geneva community.

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To read the CIES Annual Report 2020, you can view it here or below (file download).