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CLISWELN

Climate Services for the Water-Energy-Land Nexus

General Information

CLISWELN aims at building a long-lasting bridge between regional stakeholders and providers of regional climate scenario data (EURO-CORDEX) by using the climate change data in integrated models and decision making tools in order to analyze the complex Water-Energy-Land-Food Nexus (WELFN). CLISWELN contributes to the objectives of the project call by translating the results of integrated models forced with an ensemble of regional climate scenario data into tailored information for regional stakeholders. Co-development of models, tools, products, and communication strategies is key in order to ensure the usability of the results of the project.

CLISWELN at a glance (14,3 MB)

We think that the WELFN is an integral part of the climate services delivery chain, meaning that integrated approaches facilitate coherent decisions in the policy domain and avoid perilous trade-offs across the elements of the WELFN and other Sustainable Development Goals.

Water, energy and land are inter-linked resources, and policies helping to adapt to climate change with a focus on any of these resources have to be assessed in order to avoid unwanted trade-offs and to provide synergistic co-benefits, including economic activities and crucial ecosystem services related to them (food). An example of a dangerous trade-off between the elements of the WELFN is an unexpected increase in energy use and induced Greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions generated while adapting to climate change.

The link between the WELFN and climate change has been explored in a very limited number of case studies in Europe, and although climate services make large contributions to societal adaptation, literature on how to incorporate the WELFN into the climate services arena is still scarce.

The existing literature has demonstrated the relevance of the WELFN, however, there is a current lack of conceptual frameworks, models, tools, and information sources to approach the nexus in a meaningful way, which ideally would capture all the necessary implications to enable coherent policy recommendations.
The overall project goal is to enhance the existing portfolio of climate services with a conceptually and methodologically meaningful approach to the WELFN, from which coherent policies could be derived.

Funders

The project CLISWELN is part of ERA4CS, an ERA-NET initiated by JPI Climate, and funded by DLR (DE), BMWFW (AT), MINECO (ES), UEFISCDI (RO) with co-funding by the European Union (Grant 863470).