The Evolution of Global Modeling

Abstract The earliest multi-issue world models emerged in the 1970s, a decade in which energy shocks, famines, and seemingly intractable global gaps in development influenced their central foci. Already late in that decade, emerging attention to climate change and other biophysical impacts of human activity energized the development of the many integrated assessment models (IAMs) that now constitute the main thrust of global modeling. However, the continued importance of human and social development, as manifested in the Sustainable Development Goals, is increasingly drawing attention of global modelers also to the impact of change in biophysical systems on human wellbeing. Fifty years gone by, models and foci evolved. Much yet needs be done.