DIVA Model

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Project summary

The DIVA Model is an integrated, state-of the-art research model of coastal systems that assesses biophysical and socio-economic consequences of sea-level rise and socio-economic development taking into account coastal erosion (both direct and indirect), coastal flooding (including rivers), wetland change and salinity intrusion into deltas and estuaries, as well as adaptation in terms of raising dikes and nourishing shores and beaches.

DIVA is co-developed amongst a number of European research institutions including the Global Climate Forum (GCF) (Jochen Hinkel, Daniel Lincke), University of Southampton (Robert J. Nicholls, Sally Brown), Kiel University (Athanasios T. Vafeidis), University of Sussex (Richard S.J. Tol) and Cambridge University Coastal Research Unit (Tom Spencer). The GCF coordinates this development and maintains the DIVA Model code.

Objectives

To advance the scientific understanding of the synergies and trade-offs between mitigation, adaptation and sustainable development with a particular emphasis on developing and critically assessing the feasibility of win-win and green growth strategies that meet climate goals as well as the broader sustainable development agenda.
To assess costs and benefits, as well as risks and opportunities of actual and potential climate and sustainability-related policies, and their cross-scale, cross-policy and cross-domain interactions.
To accelerate the adoption and transfer of low-carbon and adaptation technologies and support green growth projects within the G20 countries, with a particular emphasis on fostering green entrepreneurs, scaling up funding and international investment.
To develop a sustained global dialogue and communities of practice that promote practical learning beyond the project partners on low-carbon and adaptation technologies, sustainable climate policies and green growth.
To contribute to major international scientific assessments, the knowledge-sharing goals of the UNFCCC and the EU strategy for international research and innovation by strengthening the evidence-base for win-win policies and green growth climate actions.

Concept & Approach

Overcoming implementation barriers through win-win and green growth strategies: Climate action, both in the area of mitigation and adaptation, is often constrained by conflicting goals and interests of the involved public and private actors at multiple levels of decision-making. This proposal focuses on overcoming these barriers by developing, transferring and upscaling win-win strategies that reconcile conflicting interests and multiple goals including sustainable development goals.
At national to global levels we focus on win-win opportunities by integrating policies across domains and developing macro-economic green growth pathways through advancing economic models by incorporating the feedback of policy on technological innovation and identifying key leverage points for technological diffusion as well as accounting for the complex interactions between agents involved in planning under long term horizons.
At local to regional levels, the project will focus on a set of contexts where both urgent climate action is needed and the potential for effective mitigation, adaptation and upscaling of action is high. These are coastal flood risk management, urban energy efficiency and energy poverty and climate-resilient livelihoods.
Encouraging private investments: An emphasis will be placed on developing sustainable business models and creating green investment opportunities for the private sector with a focus on SMEs and medium sized projects. We initiate and facilitate an open and sustained dialogue between Europe and international research institutes, business and public actors. Outreach and dissemination will be carried out via social media and an open exchange of research results.

Background

This project addresses the European Commissions Call for Proposal: ‘Linkages between climate change actions and sustainable development’

Start date: 1.6.2015
Project duration: 36 Months
Project volume: about 4 million Euro

Project partner

Participant No	Participant organisation name	Short name	Country
1 (Coordinator)	Global Climate Forum	GCF	Germany
2	The Institute of Environmental Sciences and Technology, Autonomous University of Barcelona	UAB	Spain
3	E3-Modelling	E3M	Greece
4	Environmental Change Institute, Oxford University	UOXF	UK
5	Ecole d’Economie de Paris	EEP-PSE	France
6	University College London	UCL	UK
7	The Ground_Up Project	Ground_Up	Switzerland
8	Deltares	Deltares	The Netherlands
9	Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies	IASS	Germany
10	Global Green Growth Institute	GGGI	UK
11	Jill Jaeger	Jaeger	Austria
12	European Centre for Living Technology at Università Ca’Foscari di Venezia	UNIVE	Italy
13	Institute of Environmental Sciences at Boğaziçi University	IES	Turkey
14	Center for Remote Sensing and Ocean Sciences, Udayana University	UNUD	Indonesia
15	University of Cape Town	UCT	South Africa
16	2° Investing Initiative	2D	France