2023 - 2024
Annual Report
In 2019, the European Green Deal initiated a series of announcements by the world’s major economies (the EU, China, Japan and South Korea) on carbon neutrality, which clearly expressed a shared vision of a virtuous race towards economic modernization, combining competition and cooperation. Since then, however, crises have multiplied and the bonds holding our societies and countries together seem to be breaking on all sides: the long-term effects of the 2008 financial crisis have been compounded by the Covid-19 pandemic, the Russian war in Ukraine, the crises of political governance and democratic institutions, and the geopolitical tensions that had already started to emerge on every continent in the wake of the Paris Agreement on Climate drafted in December 2015.
The European Union has both endured and harnessed these crises to implement a collective political learning process that has led to major changes in common economic tools and consolidated unprecedented forms of mutual planning, such as the NextGenerationEU recovery fund. The EU was better equipped to cope with these crises by maintaining as its roadmap the joint projects defined around the Green Deal. Even though the Deal has been called into question in the run-up to the June 2024 elections, it seems clear that the EU has everything to gain, in a context of heightened economic competition, from maintaining a clear course for transforming its economy, of which the energy transition and circularity must remain key focal points, given the continent’s lack of resources. However, to ensure Europe’s security and resilience, it is vital that ecosystems and human health are regarded by all as an integral part of this project, along with a strengthening of the social contract element, so that Europe can offer a political project that citizens can understand.
Through the definition of transformation plans, the European example shows that these plans are useful to navigate through adversity by equipping new crisis response instruments with a proactive long-term vision. This can also prevent the major economic and political blocs from turning in on themselves, and limit the risk of the race to re-industrialize descending into a brutal and unfair competition, and instead keeping the focus on building partnerships between regions on the scale of genuine cross-border industrial ecosystems, maximizing opportunities for mutual benefit.
Through all of its work, IDDRI supports the development of these transformation plans alongside the societies of each territory and country, so that they are politically supported by the various stakeholders in society, while also offering a stable and attractive horizon for entrepreneurs, innovators and investors. However, when crises come from within, such as through fragmentation, the cutting of social ties and the ability to negotiate a shared future, the essential work on long-term transformation horizons must also be coupled with an understanding of the situation outside of institutions, in the improvised social movements that arise in response to upheavals and shocks, and which therefore do not necessarily appear on the public policy radar. This is an apparent paradox, and a challenge that think tanks such as IDDRI and its partners in other countries and regions must immediately address.
"To realise Europe’s vision of a green industry, we need to make one critical decision: will we create our own and green version of "Buy American" or will we continue to let Chinese and American firms dominate the European market at the risk of jeopardising the future of the European social model?"
Marcin Korolec, former Polish Environment Minister, in a blog post for IDDRI
Key achievements
The IDDRI team that has worked on the mobility transition for the past two years has now formed the Mobility in Transition Institute (IMT). In 2023, the IMT proposed a social leasing scheme for electric vehicles that was introduced by the French government. Its work on road taxation has helped improve the guidance on vehicle purchase grants and to take better account of weight and CO₂ in penalties (company vehicles). It has promoted vehicle downsizing, efficiency and the circular economy as key conditions for the development of electric vehicles, given the need for critical materials. In regard to biofuels, the IMT has shown decision-makers that expectations concerning their use exceed their real potential, and that these fuels do not meet the challenge of European energy sovereignty.
The Deep Decarbonization Pathways network, initiated and coordinated by IDDRI to promote decarbonized development in emerging countries, has had some very tangible impacts this year, including: making a key contribution to the finalization of a North-South partnership contract (an example of a "Just Energy Transition Partnership", JETP) for the decarbonization of energy in Senegal; actively helping to build Nigeria’s long-term strategy; making progress with partners and local authorities towards the phase out of coal in India; and encouraging the resumption of a stalled dialogue in Indonesia. As part of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), it analyses the process and results of the JETPs and calls for greater international cooperation to enable progress to be made in the South.
IDDRI has developed the "GAP-Track" scientific protocol, designed to assess global progress in terms of adaptation based on expert judgement, and this year applied it to one of the systems concerned, the coastal system.
This work was published in Nature Climate Change and presented to a group of negotiators a few weeks before COP28. IDDRI was subsequently asked to lead chapters of the United Nations Environment Programme’s Adaptation Gap Report and to take part in the scientific council of the World Adaptation Science Programme. A joint study has been launched with the World Bank to pursue this research.
IDDRI is continuing its efforts to highlight the risks associated with the excessive use of Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) techniques, which are often used to the detriment of action to reduce emissions. IDDRI’s work with the climate community, focusing on carbon capture and storage (CCS), has led to calls from champion States and civil society at COP28 for strict safeguards to limit the use of CCS to emissions that are genuinely difficult to reduce–ideas that were not taken up in the COP’s final decision, despite lively discussions. In addition, the publication of an IDDRI Policy Forum in the journal Science in February 2024 should enable the feasibility of these practices to be better taken into account in the next IPCC report.
Sustainability limits needed for CO₂ removal
Key achievements
Four years after the European Green Deal, resistance to change is intensifying and many political groups are calling for a slowdown in the ecological transition. Would it therefore be possible to reinvent the Green Deal to create an equally ambitious initiative, but one that is rooted in the continent’s new realities? IDDRI sought to answer this question by launching the editorial project European States of Mind–Reinventing the Deal. This gave European thinkers an opportunity to provide food for thought on the forces shaping the political debates in Member States, to enrich the discussions on the implementation of the Green Deal, and to address the way in which the ecological transition is linked to social, economic and strategic autonomy issues, all of which will help maintain the level of ambition for the next mandate.
The news at the start of 2024 was dominated by the mobilization of farmers in various European countries and in Brussels. This mobilization played a major role in political and media debates, in particular giving rise to a questioning of the legitimacy of the European Union’s agricultural policies. IDDRI, in its capacity as an expert in the transition of the agricultural sector, responded by analysing the demands of farmers and proposing sustainable ways out of the crisis, demonstrating in particular that the agroecological transition is not in conflict with the problems raised and that it can actually help to resolve these issues. IDDRI’s action resulted in several blog posts, press articles and appearances in the audiovisual media.
COP15 of the Convention on Biological Diversity, held in Montreal under the Chinese presidency in December 2022, saw the adoption of a global framework for biodiversity, setting targets and objectives to be achieved by 2030 and 2050. It stressed the need to involve all stakeholders, from all sectors, in implementing this global framework. In March 2024, IDDRI and the French Biodiversity Agency (OFB), in partnership with Mines Paris (PSL), organized a progress report on this mobilization with a view to COP16, scheduled for autumn 2024 in Cali, Colombia. Bringing together more than 150 people, this conference enabled French stakeholders working on the progress of the Global Biodiversity Framework to mobilize around common issues a few months prior to COP16.
As part of the reform of international financial institutions, IDDRI has mobilized its capacities to lead the debate, and those of its partners in many recipient countries. Four high-level workshops were organized: in Brussels among European countries and in Washington with 14 countries, to discuss the scale of the issues at stake; then in Marrakech and Cartagena, with development banks, to encourage these banks to take more risks. The DDP and the Africa-Europe Ukȧmȧ platform of experts, co-hosted by IDDRI and the Centre for Climate Change & Development (Nigeria), have enabled recipient countries, particularly in Africa, to express their needs. IDDRI has also actively contributed to the subject’s visibility and understanding by the media.
Recent years have highlighted the vital importance of international cooperation as a means of combating pandemics and climate change-the undisputed cross-border effects of which cannot be managed by individual countries acting independently. These crises have underlined the huge efforts required to support and implement such cooperation in a world in perpetual crisis, where the reflex is to withdraw into nationalism, as shown by the issues at the centre of many of the current elections: security, competitiveness and job creation, and immigration.
Nevertheless, international cooperation remains the ultimate horizon for sustainable development. This does not mean, however, that it should not be reviewed, revisited, rebalanced and redeployed differently. IDDRI has made this one of its key missions and will not stop midway.
We are collectively committed to taking action for the future of the climate COPs and for the more general organization of a multilateral system that has seen the gradual extension of decarbonization objectives throughout the vast network of international organizations that make it up and, although slow, the progress is real.
We are working with our partners to gain a better understanding of cross-border adaptation risks and to improve the governance of these issues, which often does not require global coordination but rather a more regional and local approach.
We are also working to ensure that biodiversity is better taken into account at the international level by supporting a transparent framework for monitoring the progress of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the global integration of these issues, particularly with a view to the 2025 COP 30 climate change conference, the organizer of which, Brazil, could become a bioeconomy champion in line with its G20 presidency.
We support multilateral efforts to develop international governance to protect marine areas (IDDRI, 2024a & 2024b) and to allow the oceans to play their role in capturing emissions; IDDRI also adopts an approach that is mindful of the largely unknown environmental consequences of deep-sea mining.
We are supporting the reform of international financial architecture - including through active participation in the T20, the think tank platform set up to support the G20, whose issues permeate all its areas of activity, from climate change mitigation and adaptation to terrestrial and marine biodiversity. An international financial system that is more balanced (in its governance), more responsive and accessible (in its procedures) and more coordinated (between institutions) in serving the needs of countries has a better chance of meeting those needs, but also of generating the confidence needed to revitalize international cooperation.
The challenges of cooperation for sustainable development are cross-cutting and far-reaching. It seems essential that there is coordination between institutions that often work in silos despite complementary or even overlapping agendas. International cooperation and institutions require a sizeable and positive reinvestment by countries, particularly those in the Global South, to ensure that their voices and needs are heard and reflected–something we support, particularly through the Deep Decarbonization Pathways network. In addition, in the context of transitions that will bring major changes, the social and societal aspects–especially behavioural and lifestyle changes–must not be neglected.
"Our experience in Senegal, as in other countries, is that agreeing to an international engagement on an aspect of the economy as critical as energy is only possible with a real sense of ownership by key domestic stakeholders."
Secou Sarr, director of ENDA Tiers Monde in Carbon Brief
New programmeIDDRI is opening up a new field of research and activity on the design of future industrial policies, which are regarded by all as a necessity to assert the EU’s economic power, at a time when geopolitical and economic rivalries are prevailing. This is also a major political issue, since deindustrialization has contributed to rising dissatisfaction and populism in formerly industrialized countries.
Europe’s climate ambitions towards carbon neutrality, as defined in the Paris Agreement, are generating major technical challenges (cleantech, electrification, artificial intelligence, the place of innovation, etc.), economic challenges (especially reducing value chain risks) as well as social challenges (job creation and losses, changes in consumer choices and prices, etc.).
"Our aim is to have an impact: to look at how an analysis can shift the political debate. Power struggles cannot be won by reason alone, but it is still possible to move certain boundaries: this is our central mission."
Sébastien Treyer, in AEF, March 2024
IDDRI has a team of 53 people.
The Institute’s research fellows teach in several Masters programmes, including at the School of Public Affairs, the School of International Affairs, the School of Management and Innovation and the Journalism School at Sciences Po. IDDRI welcomed 7 interns in 2023-2024.
Research Fellow, Agriculture and Food Policies
Research Fellow, Lifestyles in Transition
Research Fellow, International Biodiversity Governance
Post-doctoral Fellow, Decarbonization of shipping
Senior Research Fellow, Deep Decarbonization Pathways
Director, Biodiversity programme
IDDRI's Chief Programmes Officer
Research Fellow, Financing Sustainable Development
European and International Project Officer
Research Fellow, Deep Decarbonization Pathways
Research Fellow, International Ocean Governance
Senior Research Fellow, Blue tourism
Research Fellow, Adaptation to climate change
Senior Research Fellow, Partnerships, Agricultural and Food Policies program
IDDRI’s Board, the decision-making body, is supported by a multidisciplinary Scientific Council, which monitors emerging scientific issues and helps to identify new research topics, and by a strategic Advisory Council, which brings together different stakeholders (representatives of different partner organizations and funding sources) to ensure the relevance of the Institute’s programmes and operating procedures. IDDRI is a public interest foundation. Its Board deliberates under the supervision of a Government Commissioner from the French Ministry of Research appointed by the French Ministry of the Interior who ensures compliance with this statute. The Board has been chaired since 2019 by Michel Eddi, with Jean Jouzel as Honorary Chairman.
The 2023 accounts, certified by the auditors and approved by the Foundation’s Board of Directors, were established at 4.9 million euros, including staff secondment costs, but excluding repayments to research partners.
21% | 1 394 800 € | French public bodies in core funding (including staff secondment costs) | |
8% | 525 000 € | Private sector grants | |
4.5% | 291 550 € | IDGM+ Laboratoire d’excellence | |
2% | 143 155 € | IDGM (AFD loan) |
31% | 2 061 827 € | Foundations | |
16% | 1 074 515 € | French public bodies on projects | |
12.5% | 821 479 € | European funds | |
5% | 328 790 € | International bodies |
IDDRI has benefited from the support of its privileged partners who have renewed their annual core funding in support of IDDRI’s activity as a whole. The year 2023 saw the renewal of the State’s multi-year support mechanism: the AFD loan, which had come to an end, was replaced by core funding from the Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Economics and Finance.
IDDRI also receives project funding from a large number of funders, as detailed below. Many of these funders have worked with IDDRI for several years, and some have collaborated with its work. We would also like to thank our new partners who have placed their trust in us in 2023, such as the Allianz Foundation for sustainable agriculture and the Bloomberg Foundation for the management of marine protected areas.
This funding enables us to implement the programme defined by IDDRI’s teams in line with the Foundation’s strategic directions and approved by the Board of Directors (see the "Financial partners" section).
47% | 3,814,175 € | Programmes: research and action | |
27% | 2,197,186 € | Research partners, expertise | |
13% | 1,021,005 € | Cross-cutting functions and operations | |
11% | 864,117 € | Events, publications, communication | |
2.3% | 187,135 € | Travel |
Most of this funding is earmarked for the research and intervention work of IDDRI and its partners (IDDRI provides more than 1.3 million euros to its partners around the world in addition to its own budget), for communication and support for the implementation of impact strategies (promotion of publications, media relations, web, social networks, etc.) and for the monitoring of institutional relations by the directors, and for the Foundation’s operational costs (structural and operating expenses).
The expenditure breakdown is as follows: 54% for personnel costs, 26% for research partnerships and expertise, 14% for activities (missions, publications, conferences, etc.) and 6% for operating costs.
From August 2021 to July 2023, IDDRI hosted a new structure, the Institut Mobilités en Transition (Mobility in Transition Institute - IMT), which aims to produce analyses and recommendations to help decision makers comprehend the challenges associated with the mobility and transport transition. The Institute’s budget, which is entirely project-funded, amounted to €475k in 2023. Since August 2023, the IMT, which was founded by IDDRI, has been an independent structure.
IDDRI's financial model is based on core funding support, which is a guarantee of our intellectual independence, our relevance and our ability to anticipate, and in-kind support from its founding members and long-term partners.
IDDRI’s research and intervention capacities are underpinned by an extensive network of scientific partners, expertise and influence based in France, in Europe and internationally. This map shows four major networks in which IDDRI is involved (European Think Tanks Group, Think Sustainable Europe) or which it has created or co-created (Deep Decarbonization Pathways, Ukȧmȧ).