EPIC Talks: Stakeholder Engagement and Co-Creation in CLEWs Nexus Research
On 30 March 2026, EPIC Africa hosted a webinar on stakeholder engagement and co-creation in CLEWs nexus research. The session brought together 50 participants from 7 countries to explore how integrated modelling and inclusive stakeholder processes can support climate-resilient development planning. Two speakers led the discussion: Camilla Lo Giudice, a PhD researcher at KTH, who presented her CLEWs modelling work in assessing potential climate impacts on Ethiopia’s agriculture and water systems. Yves De Weerdt of VITO how participatory approaches are used for envisioning transformational change and how that is used in scenario development for planning. Some highlights from the session are below.
The Trade-Offs Planners Need to See
Camilla mentioned that Ethiopia’s agriculture is 80% rainfed, and the sector provides 34% of GDP and employs nearly two-thirds of the population. At the same time, climate change is already shifting growing conditions. By developing a CLEWs model with explicit seasonal crop-growth stages, Camilla assessed how agricultural expansion and climate change affect water stress and biodiversity in Ethiopia. She compared five scenarios across two climate trajectories, using a water stress score (i.e. a proxy for demand relative to renewable supply) and a biodiversity habitat index as key indicators. Under RCP 4.5, crops’ adaptation to climate change led to a one-point increase in water stress in high-yielding areas and some biodiversity loss. Expanding irrigation could offset the biodiversity loss, but at the cost of a further one-point increase in water stress, pushing it from High to Very High. Under RCP 8.5, increased variability in precipitation and higher irrigation demand resulted in High crop water deficit across most areas, particularly during the dry season. Her modelling indicates that irrigation could be beneficial for biodiversity under this scenario, but at the cost of more water use. She concluded that integrated resource assessments in national planning can help avoid unintended and potentially counterproductive impacts on natural resources.
Models Are Not Enough
Yves De Weerdt of VITO addressed the limitations of modelling alone. Without involving the people who live with the consequences in shaping scenarios for planning, model outputs risk going unused. EPIC Africa addresses this challenge through its Transition Spaces, which are participatory processes that deliberately select participants for their capacity to think beyond existing constraints, rather than their institutional standing. The aim of deliberation and envisioning by such spaces is to derive locally owned visions for long-term, systemic change in how Water-Energy-Food systems are governed and managed. Yves illustrated this with a striking example: an activist who swam the Volta River for 40 days to expose the environmental toll of second-hand clothing waste flowing from the Global North into West African communities. The activist’s act was both a protest and a provocation that forced visibility onto a system most would rather ignore.
In EPIC Africa, Transition Spaces do not operate in isolation from the project’s analytical work. They feed directly into the modelling by defining which system dynamics and future scenarios are worth testing and enjoy legitimacy from local visions. In turn, model outputs give Transition Space participants an evidence base to interrogate, stress-test, and sharpen their long-term visions, creating a productive loop between participatory deliberation and quantitative analysis.
Modelling Results and Stakeholder Trust
Mamud Musah of UENR asked how modelling results are incorporated into transition spaces, and how participants respond when model outputs challenge their expectations. Dr Benard Wabukala of Makerere University Business School, Uganda, shared a practical answer from Uganda’s NDC3 update process: when ministries helped provide the data and validate the assumptions from the start, they trusted the results, even the difficult ones.
Prof. Edo Abraham, who chaired the session, put it simply: models without local ownership produce unused reports, while local visions need to be supported with evidence to produce better policies and systems transformations. EPIC Africa’s approach links these visions to modelling and policy analysis for integrated resource governance.
Watch and Join
Stay tuned for more educational webinars in the EPIC Talks series. The presentation materials are available through the EARN mailing list. To join the network and receive invitations to future sessions, visit the EPIC Africa website or connect with us on LinkedIn.