The French National Research Institute for Sustainable Development (IRD)

L’Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (the French National Research Institute for Sustainable Development) is a multidisciplinary organization operating under the joint authority of the French Ministry for Higher Education, Research and Innovation and the French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs. With 2,050 employees (850 researchers and 1,200 engineers and technicians), it mainly works in partnership with countries in the Mediterranean and intertropical zone. IRD research is at the cutting edge of sustainability science and primarily draws inspiration from the problems facing the real world, ecosystems and societies. Global health, governance, inequality and poverty, mobility and migration, climate and global change, oceans, natural risks, sustainable agriculture, biodiversity, ecosystems and resources: these are some of the topics addressed in a multidisciplinary approach. IRD’s operations cover a range of activities: partnership research, scientific co-publications with researchers from the intertropical and Mediterranean zone and support for research teams from these countries, provision of expertise and advice, participation in the International Development Agenda, and so on. In all its actions, the Institute ensures that its interdisciplinary, intersectoral and multi-partner strategy is complemented by excellence in disciplinary science.