Climate-nature scenarios

This research project will explore a range of ecosystem services and jurisdictions, to provide a holistic view of how an integrated climate-nature scenario framework could work, leveraging on the existing NGFS climate scenarios. The project aims to demonstrate the importance of integrating climate and nature in a nexus approach to capture their amplifying effects on physical and transitions risks. The project builds on a top-down approach, using global integrated modelling assessment to reveal the ecosystem(s) and jurisdiction(s) where high materialization of physical and transition risks in the nature-climate nexus context are expected. This will enable us to put a focus on a region highly exposed to both climate change and ecosystem service degradation, which is important to better highlight the interconnection between these two drivers. The project will address short (2030s) and mid-term (2050s) time horizons; assessments of both physical and transition risks will be performed in 5-year time periods from 2020 until 2050. The nature climate scenario design will be based on SSP storylines as well as measures for climate change mitigation policies and protection of nature and ecosystem services (aligned with 30by30 nature protection framework and other Nationally Determined Contributions). The research proposal presented here will demonstrate the nature-climate nexus by providing a practical example and expose future research needs and knowledge gaps to have a more complete and global framework in the future.