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Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - CD-LINKS (Linking Climate and Development Policies - Leveraging International Networks and Knowledge Sharing)

Teaser

Summary

CD-LINKS is a research project that brings together a consortium of nineteen leading international research organizations from around the globe to explore national and global transformation strategies for climate change and their linkages to a range of sustainable development objectives.

An important question for policy makers, in the G20 and beyond, is how to bring climate action into the broader sustainable development agenda. Objectives like energy poverty eradication, increased well-being and welfare, air quality improvement, energy security enhancement, and food and water availability will continue to remain important over the next several decades. There have been relatively few scientific analyses, however, that have explored the complex interplay between climate action and development while simultaneously taking both global and national perspectives.

Work performed

The work carried out during the reporting period towards each of its four main objectives is presented in the following.

(i) To improve the scientific understanding of the linkages between climate change and multiple sustainable development objectives

The CD-LINKS consortium has undertaken methodological advances and strived to enhance the linkages between the models participating in the project. All of them have different capabilities in terms of being able to contribute to the analysis of interactions between climate change and sustainable development (SD) and therefore the results from the range of models applied and linked in CD-LINKS are combined to arrive at an as broad assessment of SD linkages as possible. The main sustainable development dimensions in which model development has taken place during the first reporting period are: food security, access to clean energy, air pollution and related health impacts and lifecycle assessment impacts of electricity generation, relating to several SDGs. The model development will be used for assessing the SD implications of climate policies possible climate policies, also providing input to the IPCC 1.5Â°C Special Report. Three papers were published exploring different sustainable development dimensions (Fricko et al., 2016; von Stechow et al., 2016; Rao & Pachauri, 2017).

(ii) To broaden the evidence base in the area of policy effectiveness by exploring past and current policy experiences

The CD-LINKS consortium conducted an empirical analysis (consisting of 18 case studies) of past and existing policies that have a climate or broader development focus to obtain a better understanding of policy success and failure. The cases explored provide a rich, yet complex, picture of policies at the intersection of climate change and development in several countries. One of the conclusions of the case study analysis is that many policies are capable of achieving multiple objectives, but trade-offs and synergies are typically not made transparent through explicit targets and indicators. Establishing these targets and respective indicators, as well as providing data, is essential to evaluate policies and also requires new suitable methodological frameworks. This was also a main conclusion in a project publication (Pahle et al, 2016). Further, an important factor for effectiveness is good policy governance, which comprises a long-term stable regulatory framework backed by political support through for example participatory processes. Finally, there is a wealth of new policy innovation and knowledge emerging, which promises considerable potential for learning from each other. As additional effort to help broaden the evidence base in the area of policy effectiveness, a paper on electricity transitions has been published by Cherp et al. (2017).

(iii) To develop globally consistent, national development pathways

As part of WP3, existing international and national climate change mitigation scenarios have been compared through the submission of existing scenarios to the IIASA hosted scenario database. The first round of global and national scenario runs is currently underway, including scenarios exploring the current ambition levels of the INDCs, and scenarios for the 1.5Â°C and 2Â°C targets, as the European Commission has requested that the CD-LINKS project would contribute to the discussions regarding the 1.5Â°C goal that was put forward in Paris. Results of the above-mentioned scenario runs will be presented as input for the IPCC 1.5Â°C Special Report through a number of papers. As part of the work conducted already during the first reporting period, an article published in Nature (Rogelj et al., 2016) explores the Paris Agreement mitigation proposals in the light of 2Â°C and 1.5Â°C goals. Finally, preparatory steps for carrying out a multi-model assessment of country-specific adaptation portfolios for managing climate-related risk and fostering disaster resilience have been finalized.

(i

Final results

As the project has just concluded its first 18 months of implementation, progress beyond the expected impact is currently difficult to estimate. Nevertheless, the project has already been admitted important spaces of dialogue in the cross section of science and policy, such as the official side-event at COP22 in Marrakech, Morocco, and these kinds of opportunities will help further increase the potential impact of the project towards wider societal implications further on in the project implementation. On the other hand, the European Commission has requested that the CD-LINKS project would contribute to the discussions regarding the 1.5Â°C goal that was put forward in Paris and that will be subject to an assessment of literature as part of the IPCC 1.5Â°C Special Report. The project\'s inputs may prove to have a significant impact on informing the IPCC assessment and the decision making during the following years, potentially helping to increase the ambition of the Paris Agreement signatories.