Contact

Jean-Charles Hourcade
Head
Nogent-sur-Marne France
E-mail: hourcade@centre-cired.fr

Center for International Research on Environment and Development

Joint Research Unit (UMR) - UMR CIRED

The unit is primarily interested in the unintentional effects of human activity, resulting from the interaction between such activity and the natural and manmade environment. Its studies involve modelling the links between market functioning, technical choices, land use types and public policy. The scientific emphasis in this field is currently on climate change issues, in which the team has built up internationally recognized expertise over the past fifteen years.

Progress in this field inevitably means a dual approach combining biophysical and economic models, and coordinating sectorial models with a strong technological component, economic growth models, biological cycle models, carbon cycle models and climate models. The problems posed by integrating scale into models have to be overcome, since it is essential to coordinate these models on a local, supraregional and global scale in order to shed light on how environmental policies are coordinated on a regional, national and supraregional level.