Francesco Fuso Nerini’s research while affiliated with Royal Canadian Institute of Technology and other places

This study aimed at supporting robust decision-making for planning and management of water-energy-food Nexus systems in the country of Jordan. Nexus priority challenges in Jordan were identified as 1) water scarcity, 2) agricultural productivity & water quality, and 3) shift to energy independence. We created a water-energy-food Nexus model that integrates three modelling frameworks: 1) the Water Evaluation and Planning system WEAP model to estimate water demands, supplies and allocation; 2) the MABIA model to estimate crop production, and, 3) a GIS-based energy modelling tool to estimate energy requirements of the water system. Through a set of scenario runs, results show how desalination is needed to address water scarcity, but it has to be coupled with low-carbon electricity generation in order to not exacerbate climate change. Improving water productivity in agriculture improves most of the studied dimensions across the water-energy-food security nexus; however, it does little for water scarcity at the municipal level. Reducing non-revenue water can have positive effects on municipal unmet demand and reduction of energy for pumping, but it does not improve agricultural water productivity and may have negative feedback effects on the Jordan Valleys aquifer levels. Energy efficiency can support energy intensive projects as desalination by substantially reducing the load on the energy system, preventing increased emissions and achieving a more resilient water system. Finally, when all interventions are considered together all of the major drawbacks are reduced and the benefits augmented, producing a more holistic solution to the WEF Nexus challenges in Jordan.

The 2030 agenda sets the stage for global collaboration to accomplish prosperity, peace and partnership for all people and our planet. The complexity of interrelationships between the sustainable development goals is amplified in shared water basins where collaboration between different actors from different sectors and nations is needed. This study explores the synergies and trade-offs between the cooperation in shared water management and 10 out of 17 sustainable development goals. An expert-driven literature search was conducted to map the interlinkages between the shared water management and each target under the selected SDGs. A total of 62 targets were studied in this explorative mapping exercise. Results show that the cooperation in shared water management is critical not only for the sustainable management of the water resources but also has the potential to accelerate the achievement of about 50% of the SDGs. The impact is higher (71%) on the resource-related SDGs such as SDG2, 6 and 7 while it is lower (33%) in economic-related SDGs such as 10 and 12.

The North Western Sahara Aquifer System stands out as one of the water scarcest regions in the world. Moreover, in recent decades agriculture activity has grown exacerbating the pressure on groundwater resources and pumping energy requirements. In this study, a water-energy-food Nexus approach was used to assess the effect of capturing, treating and reusing wastewater for irrigation. GIS-based tools were used to capture the systems spatial dimension, enabling to match wastewater supply and water demand points, identify demand hotspots and evaluate techno-economically viable wastewater treatment options. Moreover, the minimum energy requirements for brackish water desalination were estimated. Seven domestic wastewater treatment technologies and one irrigation tailwater treatment technology were evaluated, making use of a levelized cost of Water methodology to identify the least-cost system. Four scenarios were constructed based on water-consumption behaviour of farmers towards changes in irrigation water pricing. The identified least-cost wastewater treatment technologies showed clear trade-offs, as different technologies were more cost-effective depending on treatment capacity requirements of the spatially distributed agglomerations. The reuse of treated wastewater/tailwater in agricultural irrigation, showed improvement of groundwater stress, reducing on about 49% water abstractions and groundwater stress levels in the best case scenario. However, groundwater stress still fell on the extremely high category, highlighting the critical condition of the aquifer. Furthermore, reuse of wastewater/tailwater decreased dependency on groundwater pumping and the overall energy-for-water requirements, reducing by about 15% the total energy requirements in the best case scenario. However, to effectively preserve water resources and act holistically towards the sustainable development agenda, measures as better water pricing mechanisms, management strategies to improve water productivity and adoption of more efficient irrigation schemes may be needed.