Environmental Research Letters (Jan 2021)

The climate, land, energy, and water systems (CLEWs) framework: a retrospective of activities and advances to 2019

  • Eunice Pereira Ramos,
  • Mark Howells,
  • Vignesh Sridharan,
  • Rebecka Ericsdotter Engström,
  • Constantinos Taliotis,
  • Dimitris Mentis,
  • Francesco Gardumi,
  • Lucia de Strasser,
  • Ioannis Pappis,
  • Gabriela Peña Balderrama,
  • Youssef Almulla,
  • Agnese Beltramo,
  • Camilo Ramirez,
  • Caroline Sundin,
  • Thomas Alfstad,
  • Annukka Lipponen,
  • Eduardo Zepeda,
  • Taco Niet,
  • Jairo Quirós-Tortós,
  • Jam Angulo-Paniagua,
  • Abhishek Shivakumar,
  • Silvia Ulloa,
  • Holger Rogner

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/abd34f
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 16, no. 3
p. 033003

Abstract

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Population growth, urbanization and economic development drive the use of resources. Securing access to essential services such as energy, water, and food, while achieving sustainable development, require that policy and planning processes follow an integrated approach. The ‘Climate-, Land-, Energy- and Water-systems’ (CLEWs) framework assists the exploration of interactions between (and within) CLEW systems via quantitative means. The approach was first introduced by the International Atomic Energy Agency to conduct an integrated systems analysis of a biofuel chain. The framework assists the exploration of interactions between (and within) CLEW systems via quantitative means. Its multi-institutional application to the case of Mauritius in 2012 initiated the deployment of the framework. A vast number of completed and ongoing applications of CLEWs span different spatial and temporal scales, discussing two or more resource interactions under different political contexts. Also, the studies vary in purpose. This shapes the methods that support CLEWs-type analyses. In this paper, we detail the main steps of the CLEWs framework in perspective to its application over the years. We summarise and compare key applications, both published in the scientific literature, as working papers and reports by international organizations. We discuss differences in terms of geographic scope, purpose, interactions represented, analytical approach and stakeholder involvement. In addition, we review other assessments, which contributed to the advancement of the CLEWs framework. The paper delivers recommendations for the future development of the framework, as well as keys to success in this type of evaluations.

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