The Institute for Environment and Sustainability is made up of eight Scientific Units (organigramme):

Water Resources Unit: The Unit provides scientific assessments to address societal and economic challenges deriving from the evolving vulnerability of the European and global water environment. It contributes innovative solutions to sustainably manage water resources in the face of increasing trends of a growing global population; urbanisation, pollution, overexploitation, land use and climate change and ensures that they are adequately linked to policy development and implementation.

Air and Climate Unit: The Unit provides scientific and technical analyses in support of integrated air quality, climate and related policies. It is committed to the evaluation of emissions of greenhouse gases and air pollutants, to measuring and modelling atmospheric components of relevance for human health, ecosystems and climate and to the harmonisation of monitoring and modelling techniques.

Forest Resources and Climate Unit: The Unit develops a framework for the assessment of policy options for maintaining and improving sustainable, global, forest management practices, and enhancing forest health and vitality.

Monitoring Agricultural Resources Unit: The Unit focuses on crop production, agricultural activities and rural development. It provides timely forecasts, early assessments and the scientific underpinning for efficient policy implementation, including monitoring and control systems. The work serves the Agriculture and Food policies of the European Union encompassing the global issues of food security and climate change.

Land Resource Management Unit: The Unit provides information to balance competing land‐use demands whilst securing access to natural resources and maintaining ecosystem services. The focus is on understanding the components of the human‐environment system and trends in land condition and management, along with how these respond to changing environmental, societal and economic conditions.

Digital Earth & Reference Data Unit: The Unit ensures the overall technical coordination of the INSPIRE Directive aiming to develop the European Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI), leads the development of the next‐generation of SDI (Digital Earth) and plays a pivotal role in the development of the Global Earth Observation System of Systems.

Climate Risk Management Unit: The Unit improves the observation, evaluation, anticipation and communication of the impacts of current weather extremes and future climate change and evaluates the effectiveness of policies and measures that reduce their risks towards sustainable development.

Sustainability Assessment Unit: The Unit fosters sustainability principles in EU policies by developing an integrated assessment framework towards environmental quality and socio‐economic viability in the decision making process. The focus is on environmental assessments of products and processes and the provision of model‐based scenarios for assessing Europe’s progress towards sustainability goals.



The Scientific Units are supported by the Office of the Director.