CD-LINKS Scenario Explorer

The CD-LINKS project explores the complex interplay between climate action and development, while simultaneously taking both global and national perspectives and thereby informing 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.

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
• Dozens of peer-reviewed publications, reports, and policy briefs and seven interactive tools.

Contents of the Scenario Explorer

The CD-LINKS consortium has developed a set of consistent national and global low-carbon development pathways that take current national policies and the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) as an entry point for short-term climate action and then transition to long-term goals of 1.5 and 2°C as defined by the Paris Agreement. These climate policy scenarios are also used as a basis to explore synergies and trade-offs between multiple sustainable development objectives. 

Recommended Citation

Version 2.0 of the CD-LINKS Scenario Database documents the scenarios underlying the analysis presented in a series of publications listed in Table 2 above. When using global scenarios from this dataset, please cite McCollum et al. 2018 and Roelfsema et al. 2020. When using national/regional scenarios, please make sure to include the national/regional publications for the relevant regions (see CD-LINKS Scenario Explorer for details). Please note that the recommended citation will change in future with further scenarios and information being added to the data set. 

CD-LINKS has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 642147.

Last edited: 25 March 2021