RECONNECT: Building Integrated Assessment Modelling Capacity for Pakistan

Partners: Centre for Water Informatics & Technology (WIT), LUMS · International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Austria
Duration: January 2026 – December 2027
Theme: Climate Analytics · Integrated Assessment Modelling · Energy–Water–Land Systems

Overview

RE-CONNECT is a collaborative modelling initiative between WIT at LUMS and IIASA that aims to strengthen Pakistan's national capacity to produce credible, internally consistent climate and development scenarios. The project brings together IIASA's global expertise in integrated assessment modelling with WIT's regional policy engagement and its working relationships with national institutions, including the Global Change Impact Studies Centre (GCISC) and relevant government and sectoral partners.

The work builds on foundations already laid in Pakistan: an initial version of the MESSAGEix-Pakistan energy system model, developed and calibrated for national mitigation analysis, and LUMS's participation in the FABLE Consortium, which supports integrated assessment of food, agriculture, and land-use systems. RE-CONNECT extends these two strands into a connected, multi-sectoral framework spanning energy, water, and land.

Why This Matters

Pakistan's energy system is changing quickly. Rapid, largely consumer-driven uptake of solar photovoltaics is reshaping generation dynamics at a pace that existing planning tools were not designed to capture, while the power sector simultaneously faces persistent financial and structural pressures. At the same time, the country remains among the most climate-vulnerable globally, with recurring floods and droughts and mounting pressure on Indus Basin water resources.

Addressing these challenges requires analytical tools that can represent sectors together rather than in isolation. RE-CONNECT responds to that need and aligns with the expectation under the Paris Agreement's Global Stocktake that countries be able to assess economy-wide, all-greenhouse-gas mitigation pathways.

What the Project Does

Model development. The project strengthens the representation of Pakistan's power system within MESSAGEix-Pakistan, enabling analysis of renewable integration, grid flexibility, and system economics. It advances the water–energy linkage by integrating basin-level water accounting for the Indus and calibrates FABLE-Pakistan to generate agriculture and land-use emission pathways.

Scenario development. A suite of scenarios is being designed and made available through the RE-CONNECT Scenario Explorer, enabling structured stakeholder review and engagement. These span three broad families:

  • Technology uptake pathways — exploring the implications of a rapid expansion of solar capacity for Pakistan's energy system transformation and its progress toward the Paris Agreement goals.
  • Food system transition pathways — alternative futures for agriculture and land use, covering options such as dietary change, livestock productivity, and afforestation.
  • Integrated energy–agriculture pathways — harmonised, economy-wide mitigation scenarios that bring the energy and land-use pathways together to inform assessment of Pakistan's NDCs, Long-Term Strategy, and net-zero ambitions.

Capacity development. Training is delivered through two complementary channels. The graduate course Climate Change Governance: Science, Data & Models, introduced at LUMS in Fall 2025, provides hands-on instruction in MESSAGEix, FABLE, and scenario design, building a pipeline of early-career modellers. Alongside this, targeted technical workshops and hands-on modelling sessions extend training to researchers and technical staff from partner institutions.

Stakeholder engagement. The team works directly with GCISC, provincial planning departments, and climate agencies through consultations and technical meetings that refine assumptions, validate data, and keep modelling outputs aligned with national planning needs. A national workshop combines technical training with participatory scenario co-creation, bringing policymakers and sectoral agencies into the modelling process. International experts contribute through the RE-CONNECT expert-matching facility.

Strategic Value

The modelling architecture and workflows developed under RE-CONNECT are open-source. To our knowledge, no comparable open, multi-sector integrated modelling platform currently exists for Pakistan. This transparency means the framework can be adopted and extended by government agencies, research institutions, and civil-society partners well beyond the life of the project — supporting future NDC and Long-Term Strategy development and contributing to progress on SDGs 6 (clean water and sanitation), 7 (affordable and clean energy), and 13 (climate action).

Expected Outputs

  • An open, calibrated multi-sector modelling framework for Pakistan linking energy, water, and land systems
  • A published suite of national scenarios accessible through the RE-CONNECT Scenario Explorer
  • Joint peer-reviewed publications with IIASA collaborators
  • A trained cohort of Pakistani researchers and technical staff with working expertise in integrated assessment modelling

RE-CONNECT is led at LUMS by the Climate Analytics research theme at the Centre for Water Informatics & Technology. For further information, please contact the WIT team.