Sustainable WEF Nexus Management: A Conceptual Framework to Integrate Models of Social, Economic, Policy, and Institutional Developments (original) (raw)
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Water-Energy-Nexus, 2018
The recognition of the interlinked nature of water, energy and food (WEF) resources has resulted in growing momentum to change the approaches for managing these interlinked resources. Initially, models were developed as a mean of integrated methodology for watershed management. Several frameworks and models have been proposed to help policymakers understand the complexity of the nexus and to assist with planning and regulating these resources. Most countries and governments manage these natural resources with different institutions that have their own mission and objectives, and with their own staff, data, measures and tools. This has mostly led to huge variations in terms of methodological approach to design these models, type of data used and eventually results interpretations and policies design. We conducted a review of current literature on the water-energy-food nexus to understand what's known and what's missing and identify key opportunities and challenges facing WEF design and model-ing. Our analysis also identified the followings: Our review reveals that there are a limited number of models and frameworks that address all WEF together and there are even fewer models and frameworks that has diverse methods and transdisci-plinary approaches in analyzing the nexus. It's essential as we design out modeling tools to analyze the nexus to incorporate several dimensions beyond the WEF sectors such as political, social and economic in order to reach nexus thinking and therefore address complexity of the multi-sectoral resources. Agricultural sectors require significant amounts of energy as an input to production, yet few water-energy-food resource planning approaches have incorporated spatial cropping patterns and land use by combining energy and water requirements. Policymakers are provided with an effective way to analyze the nexus on an aggregate level using macro-drivers, but these often omit the complexity of managing the resources at a smaller scale where other factors such as climate and geography have tremendous influence on supply and demand. There are knowledge gaps pertaining the incorporation of spatial-temporal drivers as well as the spatial temporal dynamics of resource availability or accessibility. This is a significant component in the WEF framework design as natural resources are subject to dramatic changes over space and time. There are a considerable number of WEF framework and models that demonstrate promising tools to analyze the nexus but some of these models fall short of capturing interactions among nexus components due to lack of data sharing and availability.
Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 2013
Water, land and energy resources are all crucial contributors to food security. As a result of growing natural resource scarcity, the inter-connectedness of these sectors has become more apparent, as evidenced by growing tradeoffs and the incipient search for cross-sector efficiencies. Proactive engagement by the water, energy, land and food (WELF) sectors with important roles for national governments and international bodies is required to holistically assess and promote investment options that co-balance benefits across different sectors. Nexus assessments need to consider both human well-being and environmental outcomes, that is, the environment has to have 'a seat at the table' for nexus analyses. Outcomes must also be evaluated for the poor, whose well-being is tightly interrelated but often in conflict with maintaining environmental integrity. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) represent a globally significant test for the implementation of nexus thinking.
2018
The purpose of this research is to develop an analytical and modelling approach that allows for the quantification of trade-offs between the water, energy and food nexus at different scales; allowing to go from national analysis of nexus stress by identifying and quantifying key intersectoral claims and trade-offs, up to a more detailed and even local specific analysis of the trade-offs. These trade-offs and the system understanding created by following the proposed steps for the analysis of nexus stress, inform them the design of Climate Smart Solutions and Strategies that make use of the most powerful leverage points and introduce or exploit existing synergies between the water-energy-food sectors. The national and local scales analyses following the proposed methodology have been applied to Ethiopia. At the national scale the integration has been done by making use of system analysis techniques in combination with the use of diverse modelling techniques for the quantification of ...
Towards transboundary Water Energy Food Ecosystem Nexus governance
Journal of Environmental Policy and Planning, 2024
In recent years, the conceptualization and application of the WEF and later WEFE nexus in science, policy and practice has progressed significantly. Despite the transboundary nature of sustainability and WEFE nexus issues, research on WEFE nexus governance in a transboundary context is less developed. WEFE nexus governance refers to societal decision-making to address challenges related to goals, actors and actor networks, scales, institutions and resources. In this paper, we explore the governance challenges encountered when implementing WEFE nexus governance in a transboundary setting. To identify these challenges in practice, we conducted a WEFE nexus governance and policy coherence assessment in two transboundary case studies: the Lielupe river basin and Mesta-Nestos river basin. Our analysis shows that in both cases the governance arrangements are restrictive towards WEFE nexus governance. Based on the factors contributing to the degree of restrictiveness, we identify four key conditions to overcome the transboundary governance challenges: (1) awareness of WEFE nexus interlinkages at all governmental levels; (2) local crossborder and sectoral communication and trust; (3) addressing issues at the appropriate level; and (4) adequate resources and natural resource monitoring across sectors. These conditions lead to recommendations to proceed towards more integrated approaches to transboundary WEFE nexus governance.
Sustainable development as the ultimate target of adopting a nexus approach to resources management
2020
Resource productivity and sustainable development: Challenges and limitations The United Nations' Agenda for Sustainable Development underlines 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) with 169 targets. The lack of holistic knowledge on the interdependency between the SDGs and an interpretation of cause-and-effect relationships that connect the SDGs enormously challenges national policymakers that must implement that are in charge of implementing the 2030 agenda at the national level and achieving the goals across environmental, economic, and social dimensions (Griggs et al. 2017; Dörgo et al. 2018). The international scientific community started to measure the trade-offs and synergies between SDGs. For this exercise, it proved helpful to make use of the concept of the water-energy-food (WEF) nexus, which showed that when addressing challenges like water, energy and food security, integrated approaches to resources management across these sectors should be used and dependent resources considered equally (Hoff 2011). The WEF nexus concept is now starting to be implemented and is recognised as an essential tool for achieving and monitoring progress towards SDGs (Bleischwitz et al. 2018; Hülsmann & Ardakanian 2018). Nevertheless, the WEF is still challenged by a few limitations, in particular concerning comprehensive coverage of the interlinkages between sectors and resources (Albrecht et al. 2018). Besides, nexus assessments are only starting to address all dimensions of sustainability, including the environmental aspect, one primary reason being that ecosystem services (WEF-E) are hardly reflected in nexus tools (Hülsmann et al. 2019). This chapter aims to highlight the necessity of including innovative tools in the assessment of the WEF nexus approach to adopt resources management to achieve Sustainable development. To effectively counteract the potential trade-offs across SDGs, holistic ecosystem management and sustainable practices are required to increase resource productivity. Sector-oriented resource management often neglects the potential impacts (trade-offs and synergies
Environmental Science & Policy, 2022
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Sustainable Water Resources Management, 2022
Abstract The twenty-first century is witnessing an explosion in global population, environmental changes, agricultural land disintegration, hunger, and geopolitical instabilities. It is difficult to manage these conditions or standardize improvement systems without thinking of the three main elements or subsystems that are necessary for any meaningful development—namely water (W), energy (E), and food (F). These key elements form what is globally agreed upon as the “WEF Nexus.” While considering them, one should think about the other key factors that influence WEF Nexus, including population’s growth, impacts of environmental changes (including climate change), moderation and adaptation regimes to climate change and climate resilience, loss of biodiversity, and sustainable nature. Together, the WEF Nexus subsystems represent a framework to ensure environmental protection that should be seen as an ethical and socioeconomic obligation. Issues, such as protection of water resources, and strategies and management tools or mechanisms for the use of water assets and agricultural innovations under the obligations of sustainable use, are investigated in this paper. Attention is paid to the relationship between water and food (WF Nexus) or water for food security in various world regions, including the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, Central Asia countries and the Caucasus, China, Africa, and Canada. This paper also presents analyses of a great number of up-to-date publications regarding the “Nexus” perspective and its applications and limitations. This paper suggests that the Nexus’ approach, in its different concepts (WEF, WE, WF and EF), can promote sustainable development and improve the quality of life of communities, while preserving natural, human, and social capital, addressing sustainability challenges, and protecting natural resources and the environment for long-term use. Keywords Water, water efficiency, water strategies, water security, and water infrastructure · Water as a human right · Agriculture and food · Climate change · Water–food Nexus (WF Nexus). FOR CITATIONS: Salem, H.S, Pudza, M.Y., and Yihdego, Y. (2022). Water strategies and water–food Nexus: Challenges and opportunities towards sustainable development in various regions of the world. Sustainable Water Resources Management, 8:114, 54p. (Published by Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40899-022-00676-3 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/361972621\_Water\_strategies\_and\_water-food\_Nexus\_challenges\_and\_opportunities\_towards\_sustainable\_development\_in\_various\_regions\_of\_the\_World
Tracing the Water–Energy–Food Nexus: Description, Theory and Practice
The 'nexus' between water, energy and food (WEF) has gained increasing attention globally in research, business and policy spheres. We review the premise of recent initiatives framed around the nexus, examine the challenge of achieving the type of disciplinary boundary crossing promoted by the nexus agenda and consider how to operationalise what has to date been a largely paper exercise. The WEF nexus has been promoted through international meetings and calls for new research agendas. It is clear from the literature that many aims of nexus approaches pre-date the recent nexus agenda; these have encountered significant barriers to progress, including challenges to cross-disciplinary collaboration, complexity, political economy (often perceived to be under-represented in nexus research) and incompatibility of current institutional structures. Indeed, the ambitious aims of the nexus—the desire to capture multiple interdependencies across three major sectors, across disciplines and across scales—could become its downfall. However, greater recognition of interdependencies across state and non-state actors, more sophisticated modelling systems to assess and quantify WEF linkages and the sheer scale of WEF resource use globally, could create enough momentum to overcome historical barriers and establish nexus approaches as part of a wider repertoire of responses to global environmental change.
Sustainability
There is a growing interest in the literature on the theme of the water–energy–food nexus, as there is growing recognition that sectors that share natural resources have interdependent and interconnected systems. Despite the widespread popularity of nexus thinking, it still lacks standardized procedures and methodologies to assist in its development. Therefore, this paper proposes, from a literature review, a systematic procedure to assist in the development of management models based on nexus thinking. To this end, 304 papers were analyzed using the following criteria: nexus concept, type of approach, geographic scale, elements in the nexus system, application context, and types of assessment methods and tools. The results of the review served as the basis for determining the procedure, which consisted of four steps: (a) understanding nexus thinking, (b) identification of composing variables, (c) evaluation (diagnosis and prognosis), and (d) decision-making. In addition to the stan...