The Centre of Excellence for Climate and Societal Changes (CECSC) researches how people have responded to climate change over time, and what we can learn from those experiences in order to understand behaviour today. The project brings together six institutions from Romania and perspectives from nine disciplines around one shared question: what makes people act?
The Centre studies how communities met rapid climate change across the Holocene, alongside instrumental records and climate projections to the end of this century.
The colour palette follows the CECSC stripes: cool colours for the distant past and warm colours for the present and projections. The colours do not indicate a temperature scale.The time axis has a break at 150 years before present, to allow a clear representation of the last century and a half.
Research on climate mitigation and behaviour has usually looked at the habits of individuals in the present.
Europe is warming about twice as fast as the global average — faster than any other continent (WMO, 2023).
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2022) shows that climate change has already pushed some ecosystems past critical thresholds, where change becomes abrupt and, in some cases, irreversible. Limiting global warming to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels requires both technological solutions and changes in how individuals, communities, industry, and governments act.
Human communities have faced rapid climate change in the past as well. Archaeological sites, bioarchaeological collections, linguistic archives, and paleoclimate proxies across Romania hold the evidence of those changes and of how people responded. Read together, through the lens of contemporary climate science and psychology, that evidence helps us better understand what leads people to adopt behaviour that protects the environment.
Human behaviour was at the core of past societal change.It is also the variable that decides whether mitigation works.
Three directions work on one question, each covering a different time perspective.
From the start of the Holocene, in the Lower Danube basin
Long-term evaluation of how human populations responded to climate change, using eco-archaeology, bioarchaeology, social history, ecolinguistics, and ethnology across the Lower Danube basin.
Read about History and CultureThe last 10,000 years, the last 150 years, and projections to 2100
Observational data, paleoclimate reconstructions, and high-resolution climate simulations, combined to link past and present climate with societal change.
Read about Climatic ImpactApplied to behaviour today and in the decades ahead
Past adaptability used to strengthen pro-environmental behaviour today, through tools that measure the determinants of climate-related behavioural change.
Read about Human BehaviourThe Centre brings researchers from these fields to work on the same question.
That is the isotope and geochemical laboratory the Centre is building at the University of Bucharest. Alongside it, the Centre is equipping laboratories across the consortium.
The research is designed to reach people outside academia.
Coordinated by Bogdan Antonescu
Administration, finance, risk and ethics.
Coordinated by Mihai Ducea
Builds the Clean Laboratory and the Geochemical Laboratory at the Faculty of Geology and Geophysics, then integrates them with the existing Petrochronology and Stable Isotope facilities at University of Bucharest.
Coordinated by Mihai Constantinescu
Reconstructs lifestyle, diet, mobility, land use, and settlement strategy across the Holocene in the Lower Danube basin.
Coordinated by Mihai Dima
A paleoenvironmental database for Romania covering the last 20,000 years, the climatic footprint of the two modes of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, convection-permitting simulations up to 2100, and the impact of heatwaves and severe storms.
Coordinated by Eugen Avram
Adapts the Impact Chain model to historical adaptation data, collects Traditional Ecological Knowledge, designs a psychometric instrument, runs experiments driven by artificial intelligence, and tests a short Cognitive Behavioural Therapy protocol with immersive virtual reality.
Coordinated by Bogdan Antonescu
The website and social media, two international conferences, public seminars and videos, a network of climate change ambassadors, and the Climate Change Education Toolkit.
Coordinated by the University of Bucharest.
Coordinator (UB)
Research teams from the Faculties of Physics, Geology and Geophysics, History, Mathematics and Computer Science, Psychology and Education Sciences, and Letters.
Partner 1 (IFIN-HH)
Applied Nuclear Physics, Life and Environmental Sciences, and Nuclear Physics departments. Radiocarbon dating, accelerator mass spectrometry, ion beam analysis, X-ray computed tomography.
Partner 2 (IAVP)
Bioarchaeology department with its Anthropology, Zooarchaeology, and Palaeovegetation laboratories.
Partner 3 (INCDFP)
Applied Geophysics, Prevention and Education Laboratory (GeoEduLab). Diachronic spatial mapping of social-ecological systems, geophysical and unmanned aerial vehicle survey.
Partner 4 (UBB)
Geography, urban planning, psychology, informatics. High-resolution numerical modelling and pro-environmental behaviour change studies.
Partner 5 (ARFCN)
“Sextil Pușcariu” Institute of Linguistics and Literary History and “George Barițiu” Institute of History. Eco-linguistics and historical analysis.
