The Institute of Environmental Science and Technology of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB) is a multidisciplinary centre that promotes academic research and postgraduate education on environmental sciences. It aims to improve our understanding of global environmental change, and the nature and causes of environmental problems. In addition, it studies policies, strategies and technologies to foster a transition to a sustainable economical and societal model.
The ICTA-UAB addresses major global environmental and sustainability challenges related to anthropogenic climate and global change. With increased global temperatures, alteration of precipitation patterns, extreme weather events, rapid ocean warming, and rising sea levels, climate change is expected to intensify the challenges of global instability, hunger, poverty and conflicts. There is thus an urgent need to act and stimulate the necessary societal transformations to adapt and protect human populations and natural resources essential for human life. Global change (more broadly than climate change, and sometimes independent of it) is also a main research line of the Institute.
ICTA-UAB is the only research centre in environmental sciences to be identified as a Unit of Excellence by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO), the highest institutional recognition of scientific research in Spain.