Collaborative modelling for new climate commitments
At the heart of the Paris Agreement, the flagship of global efforts to combat climate change, is each country’s nationally determined contributions(opens in new window) (NDCs). Contrary to expectations, current climate policies and the NDCs that support them are not on track to meet objectives. Countries around the world must reevaluate their commitment to fighting global warming and produce more ambitious NDCs for 2030 and beyond. “NDCs must be realistic and ambitious, while also meeting the needs of both sustainable development and climate mitigation,” notes the KTH team, led by Francesco Gardumi. Diverse tools and input from a wide range of constituencies are required. The EU-funded IAM COMPACT(opens in new window) project co-created a research process involving scientists and other stakeholders to leverage integrated assessment models(opens in new window) (IAMs) and produce new climate policies.
Infrastructure for holistic IAMs
IAMs incorporate features of society such as economics and development to inform policy decisions related to climate change. To facilitate the inclusion of more non-scientists in the next phase of NDC development, the project created a communication scaffold. Elements of the communication infrastructure created by researchers and other stakeholders include listening, exchanging, modelling, expanding and explaining. This fruitful structure has led to over 50 papers in top tier journals, 22 model documentation videos, reports on global and regional long-term mitigation targets and numerous conferences, policy events and briefs.
The Policy Response Mechanism
These successful outcomes were built on a strong foundation of listening. According to project manager Natasha Frilingou, at the heart of the listening component is the Policy Response Mechanism(opens in new window). Frilingou states: “This Mechanism constitutes a valuable tool at the science-policy interface, a co-creation process that has facilitated not only our internal exchanges, but also our collaboration with external stakeholders.” This constitutes a cyclic process involving clearly identified roles: modellers, policy steering groups and core working groups composed of technical policy, industry and civil society stakeholders. The process ensures policy relevance, exchange of knowledge and trust between involved parties. As Conall Heussaff from Bruegel, in charge of stakeholder engagement, emphasises: “The research process in IAM COMPACT has been entirely driven by, and co-created with, non-scientists via the Policy Response Mechanism in a series of exchanges with different groups of external actors.”
International capacity development
“Some countries face challenges in carrying out technical assessments that ensure full ownership of their NDCs,” notes Solomon Tesfamariam of Addis Ababa University. Project partners worked with Ethiopia, Kenya, Sri Lanka and Ukraine to co-create science-based climate policies relevant to these countries. “The ensemble of new, fully open-source and freely available models developed by the project includes two nexus and spatial electrification modelling tools for Ethiopia, one climate-land-energy-water system model for Sri Lanka and one for Kenya, and an energy-system model for Ukraine,” project coordinator Alexandros Nikas adds. Exchange of knowledge also involved training new experts. IAM COMPACT emphasised teaching younger minds in the four target countries. Ioannis Tsipouridis, of the Technical University of Mombasa, adds: “A six-month course on nexus modelling was offered at three Kenyan universities, and a capacity development session at the Joint Global Summer School(opens in new window) at ICTP in August 2024 was well attended.” The project is ongoing, but already its holistic, co-creative approach has many positive results. All countries must step up in the fight against climate change, and IAM COMPACT’s approach offers a way forward.
Keywords
IAM COMPACT, NDCs, Policy Response Mechanism, IAMs, integrated assessment models, Paris Agreement, nationally determined contributions
