Sustainable development and the water–energy–food nexus: A perspective on livelihoods

By Eloise Biggs, E. Bruce, B. Boruff, J. Duncan, J. Horsley, N. Pauli, K. McNeill, A. Neef, F. V. Ogtrop, J. Curnow and 3 more. 2015

796 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The water–energy–food nexus is being promoted as a conceptual tool for achieving sustainable development. Frameworks for implementing nexus thinking, however, have failed to explicitly or adequately incorporate sustainable livelihoods perspectives. This is counterintuitive given that livelihoods are key to achieving sustainable development. In this paper we present a critical review of nexus approaches and identify potential linkages with sustainable livelihoods theory and practice, to deepen our understanding of the interrelated dynamics between human populations and the natural environment. Building upon this review, we explore the concept of ‘environmental livelihood security’ – which encompasses a balance between natural resource supply and human demand on the environment to promote sustainability – and develop an integrated nexus-livelihoods framework for examining the environmental livelihood security of a system. The outcome is an integrated framework with the capacity to measure and monitor environmental livelihood security of whole systems by accounting for the water, energy and food requisites for livelihoods at multiple spatial scales and institutional levels. We anticipate this holistic approach will not only provide a significant contribution to achieving national and regional sustainable development targets, but will also be effective for promoting equity amongst individuals and communities in local and global development agendas.

Subfields: Political Science and International Relations, Water Science and Technology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e565127a566e8fc6a1fcc02c7380ec2bc48a97de

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Citations in the corpus

The Development of the Water-Energy-Food Nexus as a Framework for Achieving Resource Security: A Review (2019, background): “” The WEF nexus has also become important in both the drafting and the subsequent monitoring of the SDGs (Biggs et al., 2015).”
Smart Cities: A Survey on Data Management, Security, and Enabling Technologies (2017, background): “However, there are major obstacles [5] hindering smart cities.”
Initial progress in implementing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): a review of evidence from countries (2018, background): “Other studies also promote or apply a ‘nexus’ approach for analysis and implementation of the SDGs (Biggs et al. 2015; Le Blanc 2015; Rasul 2016; Weitz et al. 2014), as well as scenario analysis and foresighting (Allen et al.”
Anatomy of a buzzword: The emergence of ‘the water-energy-food nexus’ in UK natural resource debates (2016, background): “, 2016) and as a framing for academic work from across a range of disciplines (Azapagic, 2015; Biggs, 2015; e.g. De Laurentiis et al., 2016; Lubega, William Naggaga, 2014; Rasul, 2014; Smajgl et al., 2016; Yumkella and Yillia, 2015).”
Electricity access and income inequality in South Africa: Evidence from Bayesian and NARDL analyses (2020, background): “Access to electricity has a long-standing of improving livelihoods — household income, investments, employment opportunities, well-being, and health outcomes, and cultural activities; improving food production — cultivating, harvesting, processing, preservation, and transportation; improving water p”
Assessment on the features of coupling interaction of the food-energy-water nexus in China (2020, background): “The insecurity of food, energy and water has seriously threatened ecosystem health and human well-being (Biggs et al., 2015).”
Water–food–energy nexus index: analysis of water–energy–food nexus of crop’s production system applying the indicators approach (2017, background): “…between water, energy, and food (Arent et al. 2011; Siddiqi and Anadon 2011; Bizikova et al. 2013; Gulati et al. 2013; Lele et al. 2013; Peyman et al. 2013; Finley and Seiber 2016; Biggs et al. 2015; Nielsen et al. 2015; El Gafy et al. 2017; Keairns et al. 2016; Paul and Tenaiji 2016).”
The Water-Energy-Food Nexus: Climate Risks and Opportunities in Southern Africa (2018, background): “The region has significant shared water (surface and groundwater) and energy resources and infrastructure [15].”
Understanding barriers to decision making in the UK energy-food-water nexus: The added value of interdisciplinary approaches (2016, background): “…Sustainability Institute, Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge CB1 1PT, UK b Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future, Boston University, Boston, MA 02215, USA A R T I C L E I N F O Article history: Received 11 March 2016 Received in revised form 23 March 2016 Accepted…”
Population–Urbanization–Energy Nexus: A Review (2019, background): “Eloise M. Biggs, Eleanor Bruce, Bryan Boruff, John M.A. Duncan, Julia Horsley, Natasha Pauli, Kellie McNeill, Andreas Neef, Floris Van Ogtrop, Jayne Curnow, Billy Haworth, Stephanie Duce, Yukihiro Imanari [74] Water, energy, and food Indo-Gangetic plains, South-East Asia and Oceania, Caribbean islan”