Climate Services for the Water-Energy-Land Nexus

Climate services dealing with sectors that have strong nexus with land management (e.g. forest management for improving infiltration) and energy for water management (e.g. groundwater pumping for urban supply) need to consider these nexus when providing decision making tools for policy makers, helping them to co-design synergic outcomes in their broader agendas of societal goals. Urban areas, river basins and biomass plantations in drought-prone areas with conflicting water uses present such challenges, which ask for a local and sub-regional integration of these nexus and its simulation under climate change and different management practices, to fully understand the outcome of investments and policies for which decision-makers manifested greater knowledge is needed. The main aim of CLISWELN is to advance the provision of climate services (CS) for drought-related decision making, by using the water-energy-land nexus to integrate the cross-sectoral links of decision making about investments in infrastructure and drought management with the longer term Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). CLISWELN has the following 4 specific objectives: To co-develop a Stakeholder-driven Integrated Nexus Framework (SINF) to consider further synergistic co-benefits of climate service provision with mitigation of CO2 emissions and stakeholder-driven SDGs-related longer term goals; to analyze the socio-ecological dynamics of the case studies (urban, region, river basin) with the SINF; to co-produce evidence-based decision-support tools derived from the SINF, integrating data from existing regional climate predictions with data of relevant sectors (agriculture, urban water, forest management); to communicate the results and their related uncertainties to the stakeholders of each case and beyond, by promoting long lasting impacts through policy exchanges, networking and marketing.