Considering the energy, water and food nexus: Towards an integrated modelling approach

By Morgan D. Bazilian, Holger Rogner, M. Howells, Sebastian Hermann, D. Arent, Dolf Gielen, Pasquale Steduto, Alexander Mueller, P. Komor, Richard S. J. Tol and 1 more. 2011

1,242 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The areas of energy, water and food policy have numerous interwoven concerns ranging from ensuring access to services, to environmental impacts to price volatility. These issues manifest in very different ways in each of the three “spheres”, but often the impacts are closely related. Identifying these interrelationships a priori is of great importance to help target synergies and avoid potential tensions. Systems thinking is required to address such a wide swath of possible topics. This paper briefly describes some of the linkages at a high-level of aggregation – primarily from a developing country perspective – and via case studies, to arrive at some promising directions for addressing the nexus. To that end, we also present the attributes of a modelling framework that specifically addresses the nexus, and can thus serve to inform more effective national policies and regulations. While environmental issues are normally the ‘cohesive principle’ from which the three areas are considered jointly, the enormous inequalities arising from a lack of access suggest that economic and security-related issues may be stronger motivators of change. Finally, consideration of the complex interactions will require new institutional capacity both in industrialised and developing countries.

Subfields: Ocean Engineering, Pollution, Water Science and Technology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c847b29ea17890168f992b52d4bf558f6a85c4e7

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Citations in the corpus

Time-frequency contained co-movement of crude oil and world food prices: A wavelet-based analysis (2017, background): “Therefore, one of the ways to evaluate fuel-food price co-movement is to explore the causal price relationships between crude and agricultural commodities (Bazilian et al., 2011).”
Regional Options for Addressing the Water, Energy and Food Nexus in Central Asia and the Aral Sea Basin (2012, background): “It is argued that if the nexus is treated holistically and linkages across boundaries are established, single-sector policies that undermine the delivery of services in other sectors could be avoided and welfare improved (Bazilian et al., 2011).”
Tracing the water-energy-food nexus: description, theory and practice (2015, background): “Bazilian et al. (2011, 7897) also note that very few people are expert in more than one let alone all three areas of the nexus.”
Managing the food, water, and energy nexus for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals in South Asia (2016, background): “Groundwater has become the major source of irrigation in the region providing close to three-fifths of irrigation water (Bhaduri et al., 2011; Mukherji and Shah, 2005).”
The Water-Energy-Food Nexus in East Asia: A tele-connected value chain analysis using inter-regional input-output analysis (2018, methodology): “, 2016), incorporating satellite remote sensing analysis to assess the WEFN (see review by Sanders and Masri, 2016), modeling water-energy-food interdependencies and management (Bazilian et al., 2011; Daher and Mohtar, 2015; Al-Ansari et al., 2015; Zimmerman et al., 2016; Zhang and Vesselinov, 2017)”
The water-energy-food security nexus through the lenses of the value chain and the Institutional Analysis and Development frameworks. (2015, background): “As mentioned earlier, a number of frameworks have been used to assess water-energy-food dynamics, including a life cycle analysis (LCA), material flows analysis, and value chains (Bazilian et al., 2011).”
Towards Integration at Last?: The Sustainable Development Goals as a Network of Targets (2015, methodology): “The CLEW nexus has been intensively studied, at different geographic scales and using different modelling tools (see Bazilian et al., 2011, Welsch et al., Skaggs et al., and UN, 2014b for references).”
Securitising Sustainability? Questioning the 'Water, Energy and Food-Security Nexus' (2015, background): “…the impacts of the food – and specifically the energy sector – on water, thus striving for a more prominent role of water issues in sustainability policies (e.g. Siddiqi and Anadon, 2011; Stillwell et al., 2011; Bazilian et al., 2011; Biggs et al., 2013; Pittock et al., 2013; Lele et al., 2013).”
Shared Socio-Economic Pathways of the Energy Sector – Quantifying the Narratives (2017, neutral): “On the other hand, global energy systems are vulnerable to climate change and can serve as means for adaptation to a changing climate (Bazilian et al., 2011; Chandramowli and Felder, 2014; Ciscar and Dowling, 2014; Fricko et al., 2016, 2017; Isaac and van Vuuren, 2009).”