Can you share what inspired you to pursue a career in climate science and how your journey evolved into multidisciplinary climate modeling and research? 

I was trained as an engineer and scientist in physics at Ecole Polytechnique, were I had the opportunity to follow high level courses on the physics of climate change. I realized there that it would be one of the challenges for my generation. But, it was a detour to Kazakhstan that transformed me into an economist and multidisciplinary researcher. I was there for a gap year during my engineering studies, during which I worked on a project on climate change in Central Asia. In this region, where tensions over water resources were already high, I was able to see at first hand the impact of climate change on the Tian Shan glaciers. I also realised that the region’s economic development was heavily dependent on fossil fuels. Climate change is therefore calling into question our modes of development. I could certainly have made the same observation in France, but you sometimes have to look at things from a different angle to see the obvious. So I decided to do a thesis on the economics of climate change. Since then, I’ve fallen into research, and I’m still not out of it. Because of my dual background, in engineering and economics, modelling appeared as a natural domain where I could bring some contributions. 

Your research focuses on modeling climate change impacts and mitigation strategies. What have been some of the most surprising or impactful insights from your work in this area? 

With my colleagues, in our research, we wanted to find out how climate change might interact with socio-economic changes in demographics, education and technical progress, and influence the way inequalities between countries will evolve in the future. We found that climate change may become a major factor determining the evolution of inequality in the world, as important as demographic factors, technical progress, education, and governance. If the highest projections of future economic damage in the current scientific literature are realized, climate change would reverse the gains of recent decades and lead to a further increase in inequality between countries in the 21st century.  

But what is also important is to look at how mitigation, the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions to limit the extent of climate change, affects inequality. Because ultimately, this increase in inequality is not inevitable. What we find is that the lowest emission trajectories, in particular the emission scenarios compatible with the 2°C target of the Paris agreement, are those that have lower levels of inequality and allow to delay or avoid the date at which inequality between countries starts to rise again.  

This suggests that climate change mitigation is essential to limit future inequality, provided that the costs of reducing emissions do not fall too heavily on the poorest countries. 

Looking ahead, what do you see as the key areas of focus in climate mitigation research, and how can we accelerate progress toward sustainable development goals in the face of growing climate challenges? 

We entered the time of action in the face of climate change. Of course, actions are not yet up to the level necessary to avoid major impacts; but more and more mitigation policies have been implemented, in many countries and at all levels of governance. They still didn’t manage to reverse growth in global emissions, they only slowed their growth. We entered the time of action, and it is urgent to achieve more rapid emission reduction… Therefore, it is important to understand what works or does not work… what are the actual effects of policies, what are the barriers and levers, how policies could be strengthened… This is a broad range of questions for research in many disciplines to tackle. 

What role do international collaborations and partnerships play in your research, and how can scientists from different fields and regions work together to combat climate change more effectively? How do you think an alliance such as EELISA could best be of service to these collaborations? 

Research on climate change is very international, and many networks and projects for collaboration do exist. Maybe the most notable is the IPCC where hundreds of scientists from everywhere in the world and from many scientific disciplines come together to assess academic literature on climate change and write reports on the state of knowledge on climate change, its impacts, adaptation and mitigation options. Despite such international networks, further collaboration is needed, and further inclusion of scientists from less represented groups, women and scientists from the Global South in particular.