CLISWELN

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.

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). The link between the WELFN and climate change has been explored in a very limited number of case studies in Europe.

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.

The idea behind the project is novel and original, because the water energy nexus is an underexplored topic in the Climate Service arena. On the one hand, the proposed work advances the state-of-the-art by: 1) using existing models and extending them for investigating WELFN-related questions at a regional scale, and 2) creating new methods and decision support tools to advance systemic approaches capturing the WELFN. On the other hand, this project advances the state-of-the-play in the climate services arena by 1) providing a conceptual and methodological framework to consistently consider WELFN-related factors in climate services, a framework that supports answering nexus-related societal and research questions and is transferable to other (European) regions in order to enhance the impact of the project, 2) incorporating the WELFN for coherent policy-making across broad sustainability-related topics that are linked to the different components of the WELFN, and 3) providing WELFN-related information tailored to users.

This project will use two types of methods: (i) well-established integrated assessment frameworks for agriculture and hydrology, and (ii) ad-hoc nexus models for the urban water sector.
The framework and methods above will be applied to 3 case studies representing the variety of drought-prone areas in Europe: the Tarlung river basin and city of Brasov (Romania), the agricultural region of Burgenland (Austria), and the touristic urban region in Marina Baixa County (Spain). The cases have been selected because they of their high vulnerability to droughts and the high relevance of the WELFN. The main products of the project are
information tailored to the stakeholders needs in an agricultural region and a river basin, and an integrated urban management decision support tool for the water sector.