Linking Climate and Development Policies - Leveraging International Networks and Knowledge Sharing (CD-LINKS)

Description:

The CD-LINKS project explored the complex interplay between climate action and development through both global and national perspectives, providing information to aid the design of complementary climate-development policies.

As a four-year project (September 2015-September 2019) with 19 partners and collaborators from around the world, CD-LINKS brought together expertise from the areas of integrated assessment modelling, human development, climate adaptation, economics, energy geo-politics, atmospheric chemistry and human health, land use and agriculture, and water, among others.

The project aimed to:

• gain an improved understanding of the linkages between climate change policies (mitigation/adaptation) and
  multiple sustainable development objectives;
• broaden the evidence base in the area of policy effectiveness by exploring past and current policy experiences;
• develop the next generation of globally consistent, national low-carbon development pathways; and
• establish a research network and capacity building platform to leverage knowledge exchange among institutions.

Major accomplishments 

• Developed new insights related to policy designs that adequately account for mitigation trade-offs across sectors, actors, and objectives
• Contributed to Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C and United Nations Environment Program’s (UNEP) Finance Initiative report
• Explored the implications of national climate policies on global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, finding that implemented domestic climate policies are estimated to reduce GHG emissions by 5% by 2030
• Found that most countries are not on track to meet their own NDCs and that the global reduction expected from all NDCs is inconsistent with the policy efforts to limit warming to well below 2°C
• Expanded understanding of the linkages between climate change goals and Sustainable Development Goals, accounting for both national and local policy priorities and constraints in key G20 countries. Inclusive climate policies are needed to manage potential trade-offs and identified significant co-benefits of mitigation measures
• Examined the interactions between multiple objectives in 17 energy and climate policies globally, finding that policy makers aim to achieve multiple objectives with a single policy and do not consider complementary policies to strengthen synergies or alleviate trade-offs
• Proposed a new framework based on three policy design principles—complementarity, transparency and adaptability—to improve multiple-objective policymaking in the future

 

Project information

Lead

International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA)

Partners

University of East Anglia (United Kingdom)

Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (Germany)

Energy Research Institute (China)Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change (Italy)

Tsinghua University (China)

Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management (Netherlands)

Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (India)

Institute of Communication and Computer Systems of the National Technical University of Athens (Greece)

National Research University Higher School of Economics (Russia)

COPPE, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (Brazil)

National Institute for Environmental Studies (Japan)

The Energy and Resources Institute (India)

Research Institute of Innovative Technology for the Earth (Japan)

The Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations (France)

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (United States)

Wageningen University (Netherlands)

Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (Korea)

Source of funding

RIA