What is IAI?

The Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research (IAI) was established in 1992 following the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development to conduct multinational collaborative research on global environmental change in the Americas. Its mission is to advance scientific understanding of these phenomena and their socioeconomic implications to support policy-makers in member countries. The IAI's Science Agenda focuses on two primary themes: understanding climate change and variability, and conducting comparative studies of ecosystems, biodiversity, land use, and water resources.

• The IAI was established on May 13, 1992, in Montevideo, Uruguay, following a call from world leaders at the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, for an entity to take a regional approach to global environmental change.
• The Institute currently consists of 19 member countries: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Jamaica, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, the United States of America, Uruguay, and Venezuela.
• The IAI's dual purpose is to increase understanding of global environmental change and its socioeconomic effects throughout the Americas, and to provide member country decision-makers with scientific data to develop plans for dealing with these effects.
• One core theme of the IAI Science Agenda is the observation, documentation, and prediction of climate change and variability in the Americas, specifically examining ocean-land-atmosphere interactions and their societal impacts.
• The IAI's climate research priorities include studying the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), Tropical Atlantic Variability (TAV), American monsoon systems, the water cycle, and the impact of aerosols on climate variability.
• A second major theme of the Science Agenda involves comparative and integrated analyses of how global environmental change affects biodiversity, food security, and water resources across tropical, temperate, and cold-latitude systems.

APA

Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research (n.d.). What is IAI? https://iai.int/administrador/assets/images/ckfinder/files/IAI_Brochure_2004_eng.pdf

Chicago

Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research. What is IAI? n.d. https://iai.int/administrador/assets/images/ckfinder/files/IAI_Brochure_2004_eng.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research |title=What is IAI? |url=https://iai.int/administrador/assets/images/ckfinder/files/IAI_Brochure_2004_eng.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{interamericaninstituteforglobalchangeresearchndwhat, author = {{Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research}}, title = {{What is IAI?}}, institution = {Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research}, url = {https://iai.int/administrador/assets/images/ckfinder/files/IAI_Brochure_2004_eng.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }