Water, energy, and food security underpin nations’ well-being, and global sustainability. Awareness of the tight interconnections between these three resource systems is not new. Nevertheless, a combination
of intensifying demands on resources, increasing uncertainty of external pressures, and resource scarcity have intensified the interlinkages and amplified the cost of inaction and mismanagement. Policy decisions made within one sector are felt across all others connected to it. A clear understanding of how future policy decisions will impact all three of the interconnected WEF sectors is vital. To reach this understanding, we need to quantify the linkages between these sectors, underpinned by a thorough understanding of how these linkages vary between regions and across time. If we fail to do this, governments face the risk of unintentionally developing resource strategies that compete with one another; further exacerbating tensions among the resource systems.