Water-Energy-Food Nexus: Towards Knowledge Synthesis, Action Prioritization and Revitalization of Security Debates
The Water-Energy-Food nexus (WEF nexus) has emerged as a colossal environmental debate on how to improve the sustainability and resilience of resource systems. This debate has been inclusive of different disciplines and methodological approaches that have improved our understanding of the tight interconnectedness between the resource systems, and have highlighted the need for great coordination […]
Opportunities and Challenges for Establishing a Resource Nexus Community of Science and Practice
The American Chemical Society’s Division of Environmental Chemistry symposium Toward Creating a Water-Energy-Food (WEF) Nexus Community of Practice, brought together 25 cross-disciplinary speakers in five thematic areas: 1) state of the art models and approaches, 2) WEF Nexus initiatives and case studies, 3) WEF governance and stakeholder engagement, 4) chemical processes and WEF Nexus, 5) WEF education, community, and practice. […]
Water-Energy-Food nexus: Towards knowledge synthesis, action prioritization and revitalization of security debates
The Water-Energy-Food nexus (WEF nexus) has emerged as a colossal environmental debate on how to improve the sustainability and resilience of resource systems. This debate has been inclusive of different disciplines and methodological approaches that have improved our understanding of the tight interconnectedness between the resource systems, and have highlighted the need for great coordination […]
Toward Resilient Water-Energy-Food Systems under Shocks: Understanding the Impact of Migration, Pandemics, and Natural Disasters
The historic pandemic faced by the international community today boldly demonstrates the complexity and interconnectedness of the resource challenges we must better understand and address in the future. Further complexity is observed when accounting for the impact of compounded shocks related to natural disasters and forced migration around the world. Effectively addressing these challenges requires […]
Evaluating the Potential of a Water-Energy-Food Nexus Approach toward the Sustainable Development of Bangladesh
In pursuit of continuous economic development, Bangladesh has undertaken long-term plans to boost its productivity in the agriculture, energy, and industrial sectors and to align with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Unless these strong interconnections and cross sectoral impacts are recognized, achievement of the future policy goals and national priorities of the concerned […]
Modeling the Sustainable Development Nexus as a Complex-Coupled System: System Dynamics Modeling
This chapter begins with defining complex systems, presents an overview of the applied science of dynamical systems by focusing on the main components of complexity and chaos, and introduces the concept of dimensionality of systems. Systems have structural and temporal (dynamic) components – they exist in space and time. This chapter focuses on the time […]
Water-Energy-Food Interconnections: Methods, Tools, and Cross-Sectoral Decision Making
Interdependence, interactions, and linkages refer how variables in a system connect, influence, and depend on one another. Scientific fields, especially the social sciences, primarily analyze how a given variable is affected by one or many others. Across-impact analysis is an approach to determine how those interactions can affect future events or a way to visualize […]
Water-Energy-Food Sustainable Development Goals in Morocco
Water, energy, and food security challenges are complex and tightly interconnected (Hoff 2011; Mohtar and Daher 2012; FAO 2014a; IRENA 2015). Food production demands water; water extraction, treatment, and redistribution demand energy; and energy production requires water. With growing pressures on these interconnected resource systems due to climate change and population growth, it is critical that we understand and […]
Analyzing FEW nexus modeling tools for water resources decision-making and management applications
Social changes such as growing population, urbanization, globalization, and economic growth, compounded with uncertainties due to climate change are expected to result in substantial shifts in the demand for food, energy, and water. Food, energy and water resource systems are tightly interconnected. Addressing challenges facing any of these resource systems requires a holistic understanding and […]
Toward understanding the convergence of researcher and stakeholder perspectives related to water-energy-food (WEF) challenges: The case of San Antonio, Texas
In the past decade, research on interconnected resource challenges has primarily focused on quantifying physical resource interconnections, and there is a growing focus on the social, economic, and policy dimensions of these interconnections. While the nature of the complexity of interconnected resource challenges resulted in emphasizing the need for inter- and trans-disciplinary research and in […]