The What Works Climate Solutions Summit is a high-level conference for evidence-based climate policy that will take place June 9–12, 2024. It will promote and catalyze synthetic evidence on climate solutions for upcoming climate change assessments – particularly the IPCC’s 7th Assessment Report ─ as well as other forms of scientific policy advice.

To achieve this goal, the Summit brings together leading experts on climate solutions, key institutions curating scientific policy advice on climate change such as science assessment bodies (IPCC, UNEP Emissions Gap etc.) and science academies, evidence synthesis communities (Campbell Collaboration, Cochrane, Collaboration for Environmental Evidence, Evidence Synthesis International, Evidence-based Research Network) as well as policymakers, research funders and other users of evidence/stakeholders.

Evidence-based climate policies for meeting the international climate goals

Meeting the international climate goals by limiting warming to well below 2°C requires breaking a 270-year mega-trend of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions growth and reducing global emissions to net-zero within the next 30–50 years.

Because anthropogenic carbon emissions have already caused consequential warming of more than 1°C since pre-industrial times, there is a further need to reduce vulnerabilities and adapt to prevailing climate impacts.

There is little scope for delay and error in delivering robust climate solutions. Understanding what climate policies work, under what conditions, and why delivered by a rigorous synthesis of the available evidence is critical for delivering swift, effective and just climate solutions.

Catalysing evidence on effective and just climate solutions

The Summit brings together key institutions curating scientific policy advice on climate change (IPCC, UN Emissions Gaps, national science assessment bodies) and evidence synthesis communities (Campbell, Cochrane, Collaboration for Environmental Evidence, Evidence Synthesis lnternational, Evidence-Based Research Network), as well as funders and experts from relevant scientific communities to make progress on three major goals:

1. What works? Catalysing rigorous evidence synthesis work across the scientific community: Initiate an ambitious work program on climate solutions and advance evidence synthesis methods for evidence-based policy and the IPCC’s 7th assessment cycle.
2. Building evidence synthesis capacity: Provide access to high-quality training in and catalyse funding for rigorous evidence synthesis
3. Communicating change: Establish institutional dialogue on and convey the need for evidence synthesis in research, policy and practice.

Abstract submission

Call for abstracts

We invite abstracts related to the following overarching Themes, such as, but not limited to: Climate Solutions & Health, Climate Solutions for Cities and other Human Settlements, Climate Solutions for Land Use as well as Climate Policy (Instrument) Evaluation.

We are looking for Research Topics regarding evidence-based policies and climate solutions – mitigation & adaptation and Research Methods in policy evaluation, evidence synthesis, model inter-comparisons or any other related contributions to presentations or poster sessions.

You will find the above-mentioned categories within this form. To help us categorize your abstract, please select up to one Theme, up to two Research Topics and up to two Research Methods. Multiple choices are possible.

Sessions

We warmly invite you to submit proposals for special sessions to be held at the summit. Special sessions will usually address one or two topics within a conference theme and relate to a particular methodology (e.g. ex-post evaluation, systematic review or model intercomparison). Special sessions are intended to allow projects or any group of authors to present their work.

If your abstract is part of a session, please reply “Yes” to the relevant question in the submission form and specify the session title. Every participant of a session should submit their abstract individually, and a session description should  be submitted once per group following this template via e-mail to submission@wwcs.science.

Deadline and Review

Abstracts will be accepted only through this form and until January 31, 2024, 23:59 CET.

All abstracts will undergo a review process. The final selection of entries for the next WWCS Summit will be made by March 1, 2024. You will be contacted individually.