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The Water-Energy-Food (WEF) nexus has, in the past decade, gained prominence as an approach for assessing integrated resource management. One challenge related to the WEF nexus approach is how to represent and monitor it since a system that includes water-, energy- and food-related parameters is complex. Not only are these resources quantified util...
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Context 1
... must be developed sensibly and transparently, and used responsibly, since they can be misused ( Saisana et al. 2018). Figure 1 shows that indicators and indices are developed from data to yield information that can ultimately be used for decision-and policy-making. As knowledge is developed, it can, in turn, influence the data collection and indicators for refining the process. ...
Context 2
... WEF Nexus Index value is, therefore, an indication of a country's level of equitable access to, and availability of, these three critical resources. These assessments should be combined with other quantitative and qualitative research to broaden the analysis beyond the 'reach' of the constituent indicators (which is a limitation of a composite indicator), as presented in Figure 1. ...
Context 3
... or developing), or by assessing a nation relative to a specific country included in the study (high or low ranking). By providing a quantitative measure of the WEF nexus, the index provides a summary and entry point to the complex dataset that underlies it (refer to Figure 1). A more detailed analysis of the constituent indicators will provide the researcher, policy-maker or decision-maker with insights and prompts in terms of where interventions and investments are necessary. ...
Citations
... Recent studies on the WEF nexus [4] have focused on various geographic regions [5], including Europe [6,7], Africa [8,9] Asia [10,11], and the Americas [12,13], highlighting the complex interactions between water, energy, and food resources. For example, water can provide energy (through hydroelectric projects) but can also require energy for it to be pumped for agricultural use or to be desalinated for water supply [14]. ...
... 1m 3 ∕sec × 90 days(irrigation period) = 7,776,000 m Municipality of Mantoudi-Limni-Agia Anna, cultivated land and zoom window of the study area[8] b The view within the zoomed window, indicating an average natural outlook of the land and its local uses[8] ...
... 1m 3 ∕sec × 90 days(irrigation period) = 7,776,000 m Municipality of Mantoudi-Limni-Agia Anna, cultivated land and zoom window of the study area[8] b The view within the zoomed window, indicating an average natural outlook of the land and its local uses[8] ...
The Water–Energy–Food (WEF) nexus is defined in modern societies through a complex interaction of trade, transportation of goods, energy generation technologies and many other parameters. However the dynamics of the WEF nexus are often ignored by technical and scientific communities. The systemic nature of the WEF nexus emphasizes the various interconnections between water, energy, and food, promoting the adoption of a holistic approach, in which the interlinkages highlight synergies and trade-offs and lead to more successful resource management. In contemporary times resources seem abundant as shortages are easily covered by trade and therefore land is often used without evaluating where it could be more productive and potential dangers to the stability of the WEF can be neglected. In this work, the dynamics of the WEF nexus are investigated, evaluating the efficiency of land in relation to the elements of the nexus. As a case study, we chose North Euboea, Greece, specifically focusing on the Municipality of Mantoudi-Limni-Agia Anna. Although the WEF nexus has been increasingly studied, few works have particularly focused on how ecosystem changes disrupt the interlinkages between the nexus components. This study addresses this gap by focusing on the effects of biodiversity alterations (specifically wild boars) on the WEF nexus in a rural Mediterranean context. We explored land use patterns, energy needs, and water requirements for inhabitants, agriculture and livestock for food production, under several assumptions. It is found that if land was used solely for energy production, the energy generated would suffice for the energy consumption of 200,000 inhabitants. The potential of land use for food production on the other hand is corresponding to the food needs of 200,000–300,000 inhabitants. Lastly, as an investigation of the sensitivity of the WEF nexus to environmental stresses, we create a model for the potential impact from the expansion of the local wild-boar population that has been identified as an emerging stress for the local agricultural sector, with potential of diminishing local agricultural production within a few years.
... In agriculture, they increase efficiency and improve resource management through the use of devices linked to the Internet of Things (IoT), (Mondejar et al. 2021). Digital technologies play a supporting role for the effective interconnection between water (pumping) and Simpson et al. (2020) energy and food (irrigation). As we can see in Fig. 1, elaborated from data from FAO's Status Report of Digital Technologies in Agriculture and Rural Areas (Trendov et al. 2019), digital technologies in the agriculture and food production system have a wide space for application and potential to improve efficiency. ...
... As mentioned previously, a tailor-made solution for each specific case where a WEF technology is planned to be implemented is a great measure to increase the probability of success and acceptance. To achieve this, the WEF Nexus Index developed by Simpson et al. (2020) provides an informative method to measure countries' level of development on specific indicators related to water energy and food sectors. This can potentially help identify the environment of the hosting country/community in regard to the welcoming of a new technology, as well as designing secondary activities along the insertion of the technology itself, tackling the community's overarching needs. ...
Improving access to and use of renewable energy (SDG 7), increasing reliable water supply (SDG 6), enabling irrigation and digital technologies in agriculture, and operations for food preservation (SDG 2) are activities focused on the three Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), pillars of this chapter. There is a great potential to expand these SDG ranges through planning and local involvement to contribute positively to as many SDGs as possible through the specific implementation of these activities. Focusing in the Sahel region, where the livelihood
of 2 out of 3 people is based on subsistence farming, development of agricultural techniques slowly evolves, and at the same time largely depending on traditional techniques such as rain-fed agriculture. Climate change has invoked unprecedented
and extreme events that make it challenging for communities to adapt. This chapter is embedded in the context of water-energy-food nexus technologies, contributing to address multiple sustainable development goals with their interconnected synergies and trade-offs with the potential to also restore
degraded landscapes and transform millions of lives in the Sahel region. In addition, the chapter goes beyond exposing the water-energy-food challenges in this region, highlighting the experience in implementing agrivoltaics (AV) to respond to water, energy, and food challenges in the Sahel. The research puts forward that while initiatives such as tree planting offer long-term benefits, this
needs to be coupled with immediate technical and economic responses in agrivoltaic concepts to benefit from a triple land use that also responds to water-energy-food needs and at the same time contributing to sustainable livelihoods and environment protection.
... Each pillar divided into two sub-pillars, access and availability, which are weighted equally [32]. The water pillar contains 7 indicators (3 access and 4 availability), energy pillar contains 6 indicators (4 access and 2 availability), and food pillar contains 8 indicators (4 access and 4 availability) [33,34]. ...
... On the other hand, the Egypt's WEF nexus index values in 2019 and 2020 were 52.9 and 55.3, with ranking of 121st and 111st, respectively (Fig. 10) [36]. Table 2 and Fig. 10 reveales that the Egyptian WEF nexus index decreased by -3.98% between years 2020 and 2021, this is owning to the annual freshwater decreased [33][34][35][36], while the accessibility of the other indicators remain constant (Table 3) [33][34][35][36]. ...
... On the other hand, the Egypt's WEF nexus index values in 2019 and 2020 were 52.9 and 55.3, with ranking of 121st and 111st, respectively (Fig. 10) [36]. Table 2 and Fig. 10 reveales that the Egyptian WEF nexus index decreased by -3.98% between years 2020 and 2021, this is owning to the annual freshwater decreased [33][34][35][36], while the accessibility of the other indicators remain constant (Table 3) [33][34][35][36]. ...
The Water-Energy-Food, WEF, Nexus approach is a holistic vision of sustainability that recognizes and tries to strike a balance between the different goals, interests and needs of people and the environment. The Nexus is not new concept, as interdependency does exist in nature. However, management of water and energy for food production with the aim to produce more food from less water and energy using a more integrated and holistic approach was not commonly practiced. Egypt is considered to be one of the most vulnerable countries to the impact of climate change. Water, food, and energy securities are becoming more important in the light of climate change and population growth. Energy scarcity and rising energy prices would increase poverty, strain the national budget and jeopardize Egypt’s competitiveness for the future. The global warming would result in reduced freshwater resources availability, increased irrigation water requirement as well as water and energy consumption. The Egypt’s Nile Delta is particularly susceptible to seawater rise due to climate change with its low-altitude. Guaranteeing food security given the limited water and agricultural land coupled with population growth is creating a mounting pressure on Egypt’s ability to provide food for its people in the future. The Egypt’s WEF nexus index value was 53.1, and ranks 125th among nations in the year 2021. On the other hand, the index values in years 2019 and 2020 were 52.9 and 55.3, with ranking of 121st and 111st, respectively. Egypt needs more efforts to reach sustainable agriculture production and improve WEF nexus index value.
... A composite indicator or index is created to provide a comprehensive view of the context being examined, for example, the WEF nexus [3]. The WEF Nexus Index value serves as a reflection of a country's level of equitable access to and availability of these three critical resources [6]. This paper's objective is to evaluate how the WEF Nexus Index has performed in the past five years, focusing on comprehending the interdependent and intricate nature of the Climate-Water, Energy, and Food Security systems in Morocco. ...
... JRC: COIN recommends choosing the indicators that will form the index as the next step in creating a composite indicator. The selection of indicators shown in Fig. 2 was guided by the framework, index, pillar, and sub-pillar structures developed for the system under assessment [6]. The selection of indicators can be difficult due to the lack of indicators that measure the linkages between elements of the constituent sectors. ...
... The pillar scores were established by calculating the average of the subpillar scores, and the pillar scores were averaged to create the final index score. [6] A free access and interactive website associated with the WEF Nexus Index presents the results for the index of all calculated countries (170 countries) namely https://www.wefnexusindex.org This website provided us with the results of our case study. ...
The WEF Nexus Index’s quantitative perspective provides a way to evaluate the trade-offs that need to be taken into account for sustainable development. Morocco’s natural resources are being impacted by climate change, and the demand for energy, water, and food are increasing the pressure on these resources. Academics are becoming more interested in measuring the synergies and trade-offs between this resource. The purpose of this paper is to offer an interpretation of how the Morocco WEF Nexus Index has changed over the course of 5 years, as determined by open databases. The index’s value decreased and Morocco’s ranking deteriorated during this period, as evidenced by the results. The results are useful for evaluating Morocco’s progress in managing integrated resources and aiding in decision-making and policy development. On an interactive website, A group of visual representations linked to WEF Nexus Index has been put together.
... Despite the increasing recognition of the importance of interlinkages and dependencies between sectors, the nexus approach commonly remains abstract or at the level of political statements. Simpson et al., (2020) presented a national-level composite indicator that has been established for 181 countries for the assessment of applicable water, energy, and food related indicators. The WEF Nexus Index value for Egypt is 52.9, placing the nation in the 121st position among the 181 countries assessed. ...
... One of these challenges is to perform a fair evaluation of the WEF nexus, which involves the inherent interrelation of its resources as well as social, environmental, and economic impact metrics. Several research studies have focused on assessing the viability and sustainability of the WEF nexus (Simpson et al. 2020). Other researchers, at the investment level, have focused on institutional policies and governance (Pahl-Wostl et al. 2021). ...
The evaluation of the water-energy-food nexus is one of the most relevant issues today. Decisions and action plans are essential for the sustainable management of resources. This paper proposes the use of a macro-index to facilitate the evaluation of the synergies within the water-energy-food nexus, exploring the interactions between resources, sustainable development, and human development. The macro-index considers resource accessibility, availability, and various social, economic, and environmental aspects and serves as a comprehensive indicator influenced by major economic, social, and environmental trends or developments. The macro-index measurements encompass sustainable development objectives and resource allocation, providing valuable guidance to decision-makers.
... Consequently, a series of indices have emerged, individually, for water the Water Exploitation Index (Lallana and Marcuello, 2004), water security indices (Dang et al., 2022); in energy, Energy Supply or Demand Index (Kruyt et al., 2009) and for food, Global Food Security Index (Rosegrant and Cline, 2003;Santeramo, 2015;Fernández-Ríos et al., 2021), Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (Islam et al., 2021). Collectively "Nexus Assessment 1.0" (Flammini et al., 2014), Pardee RAND "FEW Index" (Abbott et al., 2017;Willis et al., 2016), "WEF-SDGs Assessment" (Giupponi and Gain, 2017), WET Sustainability Index , the Water and Energy Index and the WEF nexus indicator (Simpson et al., 2020) which addresses the 'access' and 'availability' pillars. Indicators of reuse and efficiency of water and food (Yuxi et al., 2023). ...
The effects of climate change, such as droughts and decreased rainfall, as well as population growth and globalization are aggravating the availability of water, energy and food. As a result, meeting the population's demand will be a major challenge in the near future. For this reason, assessing the situation of the water-energy-food (WEF) nexus is of great importance to know the vulnerabilities of the system and take actions to correct or improve them. The contribution of this work is the formulation of a composite index called the WEF-Waste index that includes 13 indicators, 4 of which are indicators to measure aspects of the water sector that include availability, independence, treatment and recycling; 3 energy indicators that include availability, independence and renewable energy; 4 food indicators that measure availability, food independence, ecological area planted and food waste; and 2 urban solid waste indicators that measure the level of separation and reuse. The WEF-Waste index was evaluated in Spain at the national level and in the 17 autonomous communities over a period of 10 years in order to focus on the spatial and temporal distribution pattern of the WEF nexus. Results show that the indicator with the lowest scores over the years was water availability, which indicates a very important water deficiency. On the other hand, high values in the water treatment indicator were obtained, showing that a high percentage of the water supplied to the network and used is processed in wastewater treatment plants. The WEF-Waste index has an improving trend from 2010 to 2014. However, by 2016 it suffered a decay and from that year to 2020, it again presented a positive trend in the scores of the communities.
... The WEF Nexus Tool 2.0 is a multi-stakeholder water, energy, and food resource allocation strategy assessment tool that identifies potential current and future nexus interlinkage bottlenecks to overcome resource stress challenges (Daher and Mohtar 2015;Lee et al. 2020). There are multiple other nexus tools such as WEF Nexus Index (Simpson et al. 2020); PRIMA (Kraucunas et al. 2015); WEF Nexus Assessment 1.0 (Flammini et al. 2014);Foreseer (Allwood et al. 2016;Price et al. 2018); Q-Nexus model (Karnib 2017;Karnib and Alameh 2020); EWF Nexus Tool (Al-Ansari et al. 2015); Pardee RAND WEF Security Index (Willis et al. 2016); and many others (Taguta et al. 2022;Sušnik and Staddon 2021;Stylianopoulou et al. 2020;Albrecht et al. 2018). ...
To enhance water, energy, and food security and promote ecosystems conservation, it is necessary to design policies or solutions capable of addressing cross-sectoral challenges. In this paper, GoNEXUS SEF, an evaluation framework for co-designing and evaluating nexus solutions, is presented. This framework provides guidelines for conducting a nexus-coherence assessment to improve the governance of the water-energy-food-ecosystems nexus. The assessment involves a participatory process that integrates qualitative and quantitative methodologies through systemic approaches. The crucial aspects necessary in the development of methodologies that address the nexus have been identified and considered. The framework was applied to a practical case study, an increase in the irrigation water price in Andalusia—Spain for the horizon of 2030. Case study results revealed that the measure can generate synergies since it favours water savings, irrigation water efficiency and ecosystems conservation. However, trade-offs are observed, mainly undermining the economic development of agriculture in the region. GoNEXUS SEF has proven capable of evaluating nexus solutions by measuring cross-sectoral synergies and trade-offs. It highlights hidden properties and identifies leverage points and key aspects of a complex cross-sectoral system to apply nexus solutions more effectively to promote sustainable development. In addition, the framework can be adapted to fit different case studies, considering their own challenges and their spatial and temporal scales, which gives it a competitive advantage over other methodologies focused on analysing the nexus.
Graphical abstarct
... The organization has positive and proactive behavior beyond the basic requirement hotspots (Eurostat, 2020a(Eurostat, , 2020b(Eurostat, , 2020c(Eurostat, , 2018International Labour Organization, 2022a, 2022b, 2022cOECD, 2022;Simpson et al., 2020) to screen impact subcategories for the site specific analysis. Figs. 3 and 4 refer to indicators of the Workers category. ...
... According to SDG target 6.5, by 2030 IWRM should have been implemented at all levels (United Nations, n.d.). Fig. 7 shows that Italy ranks lower than the European Union average according to the degree of IWRM implementation (Fig. S3) (Simpson et al., 2020). Italy scores high according to the UN in indicators "Enabling environment", "Institutions and participation", and "Management instruments", but much lower in "Financing". ...
... (For interpretation of the references to color in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.) Water consumption and treatment based on: a) percentage of citizens using at least basic sanitation services, b) wastewater treatment, and c) annual freshwater withdrawals(Simpson et al., 2020). ...
The sustainable supply of water is crucial, especially on islands where water is scarce. Our study applied the social life cycle assessment (S-LCA), under the organizational approach, to assess industrial water production on the island of Lampedusa, Italy. A novel plant for industrial water production considering a circular concept was compared with the existing linear production plant based on reverse osmosis. An online survey, brief literature review and generic analysis were conducted to prioritize impact subcategories selection for site-specific analysis that regarded six organizations in the system boundaries. These subcategories were Local employment, Access to material resources, Promoting social responsibility, End-of-life responsibility, Health and safety (Workers), and Public commitment to sustainability issues. The social performance of organizations involved was assessed based on equal weighting and weighting with cost values. The generic analysis showed that wastewater treatment in Italy is underdeveloped, and water scarcity can become a serious problem in the future. The site specific analysis based on equal weighting showed that the novel water plant results in improving social performance for all considered impact subcategories by 88 % to 91 % due to co-production when compared with the existing plant. Even increasing impacts allocation to industrial water production social benefits are still expected due to co-production. The type of weighting based on cost values showed that two organizations are the main contributors to the social performance of the novel system, and improving their corporate conduct can result in improving impacts up to 25 %, such as Public commitment to sustainability issues. To conclude, the novel plan does provide social benefits but mainly due to co-production, thus, it should be investigated more how to apply the S-LCA to linear production systems as they become more circular.
... In agriculture, they increase efficiency and improve resource management through the use of devices linked to the Internet of Things (IoT), (Mondejar et al. 2021). Digital technologies play a supporting role for the effective interconnection between water (pumping) and Simpson et al. (2020) energy and food (irrigation). As we can see in Fig. 1, elaborated from data from FAO's Status Report of Digital Technologies in Agriculture and Rural Areas (Trendov et al. 2019), digital technologies in the agriculture and food production system have a wide space for application and potential to improve efficiency. ...
... As mentioned previously, a tailor-made solution for each specific case where a WEF technology is planned to be implemented is a great measure to increase the probability of success and acceptance. To achieve this, the WEF Nexus Index developed by Simpson et al. (2020) provides an informative method to measure countries' level of development on specific indicators related to water energy and food sectors. This can potentially help identify the environment of the hosting country/community in regard to the welcoming of a new technology, as well as designing secondary activities along the insertion of the technology itself, tackling the community's overarching needs. ...
