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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
... to the JRC:COIN, the first step in forming a composite indicator is the development of a framework for the system under assessment ( Saisana et al. 2018). To this end, the anthropocentric WEF nexus framework, presented in Figure 2, was utilised as the basis for the WEF Nexus Index's construction. At the core of this framework is human society, i.e. ...
Context 2
... the anthropocentric framework (refer to Figure 2) and the selection of indicators to form the WEF Nexus Index were presented at various forums during this project to facilitate stakeholder/expert engagement. These interactions proved to be beneficial in obtaining vital input on both the interpretation of the framework and the final selection of indicators. ...
Citations
... 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.
... 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. ...
... To identify the indicators influencing the WEF security nexus, the indicators in this study were selected based on the criteria defined in previous studies. Simpson et al. (2020) developed a composite indicator that can effectively measure the WEF nexus using a method developed by the European Commission. Flammini et al. (2014) proposed comprehensive indices for determining the interactions among WEF sectors. ...
With the exponential increase in the demand for water, energy, and food (WEF), WEF security is being threatened. To address this issue, the nexus approach, which explores interactions among different WEF sectors as an integrated system, can distinguish between different influencing indicators of WEF security. However, studies on the interactions between WEF sectors in South Korea are few, consequently challenging WEF security, and in the field of social science, WEF security nexus research using a quantitative approach is lacking. This study discusses the interactions composed of synergies and trade-offs between WEF sectors in South Korea through Spearman's rank correlation and network analyses using secondary data at the national level. The results show that the interaction between energy or energy-related sectors was highest; specifically, increasing the proportion of renewable energy utilization improved WEF security. In the water and food sectors, water infrastructure management and value-added management of agriculture showed the most interactions, respectively. The findings demonstrate that WEF security is an interconnected rather than an independent system, and WEF security improves efficiently when preferentially upgrading indicators with many interactions. The study provides important guidelines to prioritize policies to implement sustainable resource management systems.
... To assess the four sectors (food, energy, water, carbon) together, we designed a composite sustainability index based on the FEWC nexus with four dimensions and nine indicators build upon indices developed in recent studies (Fernández-Ríos et al., 2021;Nhamo et al., 2020;Simpson et al., 2020). Indicators were identified based on the following criteria: ...
While aquaculture is critical to global food and nutrition security, the fast development of aquaculture production systems has recently increased concerns about resource overexploitation and associated environmental impacts. Understanding how sustainable is current global aquaculture practice is important given its potential impacts on key sustainable development goals (SDGs). Here, for the first time, we developed a food-energy-water-carbon (FEWC) composite sustainability index (0–100) to assess the sustainability of global aquaculture across countries. Results indicate that the overall sustainability of global aquaculture is low (average score = 26) with none achieving a high sustainability score (75–100) and almost all practicing aquaculture in a relatively low sustainable way (0–50). Considering the sub-sustainability at a sector level, 80% of countries had at least two sectors among FEWC falling into the low sustainable zone (score less than 25). Regarding the environmental impacts, global aquaculture production accounted for approximately 1765.2 × 10³ TJ energy use, 122.6 km³ water consumption, and 261.3 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions in 2018. China led all countries by contributing to more than half of global aquaculture water consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, followed by India and Indonesia. This study highlights the significance of cross-sectoral management and policymaking to achieve global aquaculture sustainability.