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Alliance for Global Sustainability
  
The Alliance for Global Sustainability (AGS) is a unique, international partnership between four of the world's leading science and technology universities:

Created in 1997, the AGS today brings together hundreds of university scientists, engineers, and social scientists to address the complex issues that lie at the intersection of environmental, economic, and social goals. Together, we seek to meet these challenges through:

  • * Improving scientific understanding of global environmental challenges;
  • * Developing technology and policy tools to help societies reconcile ecological and economic concerns; and
  • * Educating of a new generation of leaders committed to meeting the challenges of sustainable development.

Since its inception, the AGS has pioneered a new research paradigm that brings together multi-disciplinary research teams from the partner institutions. Strong, local programs engage faculty, students and senior research staff from across their respective institutes. These research teams have developed a significant body of new knowledge on critical issues in sustainability in the areas of energy and climate, mobility, urban systems, water and agriculture, cleaner technologies, and policy and communications.

Since the first set of AGS-sponsored research projects was launched in 1997 with support by the Avina Foundation, the AGS has worked with farsighted leaders from global businesses and industries, governments, and NGOs worldwide to provide innovative and practical solutions to real and urgent environmental problems around the world.

Now entering a new phase, the AGS is building upon the lessons it has learned to embark on large-scale studies of global importance. The first, entitled "Near-term pathways to a sustainable energy future", is aimed at developing near-term scenarios to meet global energy needs while reducing anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental threats. The second is entitled "Secure ecosystem services for a nourished world" and will identify development paths for social and technical systems that aim for a nourished world in balance with the provisioning ecosystem. The programs will consist of a series of regional studies linked by an integration project.