Tracing the water-energy-food nexus: description, theory and practice

By H. Leck, D. Conway, M. Bradshaw, J. Rees. 2015

440 citations recorded by the source corpus.

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.

Subfields: Energy Engineering and Power Technology, Pollution, Water Science and Technology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/32a629dec93c34fb30cdb517f96b1b512d4532ba

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In Energy Engineering and Power Technology

In Pollution

In Water Science and Technology

Citations in the corpus

The Development of the Water-Energy-Food Nexus as a Framework for Achieving Resource Security: A Review (2019, background): “Leese and Meisch (2015) argue that the WEF nexus’ focus on securitisation, i.e., the security agenda centered on the risk of non-supply, is one that is driven by economic considerations, not the challenges related to livelihoods, which has traditionally been within the ambit of sustainable…”
The Water-Energy-Food Nexus: Climate Risks and Opportunities in Southern Africa (2018, background): “While current developmental approaches have often negatively impacted on other sectors and sustainability thereof, a WEF nexus approach could contribute to sustainable socio-economic and inclusive development [5,12,14].”
Climate change and the water–energy–food nexus: insights from policy and practice in Tanzania (2018, background): “…(Hussey & Pittock, 2012; Leck et al., 2015; Yumkella & Yillia, 2015), the WEF nexus promotes a systems perspective, emphasizing holistic and cross-sectoral approaches to decision making and planning (Cairns & Krzywoszynska, 2016; Hussey & Pittock, 2012; Leck et al., 2015; Yumkella & Yillia, 2015).”
The Water-Energy-Food Nexus in East Asia: A tele-connected value chain analysis using inter-regional input-output analysis (2018, background): “…and the environment: e.g., scarce water (Feng et al., 2014a; Lenzen et al., 2013); water pollution (Okadera et al., 2006); CO2 (Du et al., 2011; Feng et al., 2013); emergy (Cho, 2013); ecological and water footprints (Hubacek et al., 2009; Ewing et al., 2012); land, carbon, and water (Lee, 2015).”
System complexity and policy integration challenges: The Brazilian Energy- Water-Food Nexus (2019, methodology): “plication of such an approach requires the existence of sufficiently good models to optimise Nexus governance choices [10].”
A 40-year review of food–energy–water nexus literature and its application to the urban scale (2019, result): “In contrast to reviews of FEW nexus scholarship that are largely conceptual (e.g. Leck et al 2015), our literature review employs a quantitative and evidence-based approach.”