Analyzing Stakeholder Engagement in the CFEWS (Climate-induced extremes on the linked Food, Energy, Water System) Research Framework

Both scholarship and practice suggest that integrated governance of food, energy, and water systems (FEWS) is needed to support regional sustainability and climate resilience, but achieving such integration has proven to be challenging due to weak coordination among actors from different sectors and scales. The integration of models assessing climate risks and FEWS can support governance of FEWS by providing detailed information about how climate risks may cascade through these sectors. A promising approach to inform strategic planning and coordination is to link integrated models of FEWS with stakeholder dialogues to explore alternative possible futures and to better engage audiences of decision makers, regulators, and managers on how to manage risks and make informed decisions by revealing the effects of assumptions and trade-offs that affect well-being, resilience, and sustainability. This presentation will describe experiences co-designing scenarios and creating dialogues among modelers and stakeholders. This is being done in the context of the C-FEWS (Climate-induced extremes on the linked Food, Energy, Water System) research framework which enables systematic assessment of future engineered and natural infrastructures that will define the capacity of Midwestern and Northeastern US regional FEWS to adapt to changing climate extremes and other environmental stressors from 1980 to 2100. Scenarios linking climate, land use, policy options, and technological innovation were co-designed with stakeholders to highlight possible trade-offs among competing goals of, for example, decarbonization of energy systems, shifting to more localized food systems, and carbon sequestration by forests. The scenarios were explored in workshops with regional decision makers from the public and private sectors in the Midwest and Northeast. The results of the workshops, including how stakeholders responded to scenarios and assessed risks, trade-offs, and opportunities for adaptation, will be presented. We will conclude with an assessment of what stakeholders gained from being engaged in this process.