Mainstreaming Water-Energy-Food-Nexus in Developing Countries

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Mainstreaming Water-Energy-Food-Nexus in Developing Countries

Mainstreaming Water-Energy-Food-Nexus in developing countries, From a sector perspective to a more integrated approach.

The Nexus is a conceptual framework that recognizes the interconnectedness of water food- and energy Securities and seeks to develop collective solutions that mitigate the tradeoffs and promote synergies among them. The nexus approach basically means integrating solutions and strategies while focusing on issues in the interlinks between the three resources!  

Nexus approach is needed to tap positive synergies and avoid negative externalities. Risks to food security through higher prices are greatest where bioenergy is based on food crops or uses land and water that would otherwise go into food production. Based on current technology, the rapid expansion of liquid biofuels is contributing significantly to rising food prices. This benefits rural farmers with a surplus to sell and may create jobs, but hurts urban consumers and the rural poor who must buy food.  

As shown below in the figure, According to UN report, Low income and middle countries tend to use most of the water towards meeting their basic needs such as food, whereas, the share of domestic and industrial consumption increases magnificently for high-income countries.

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The many interlinkages of global:

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With Increasing Demands for water, energy, and food:  

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Policy integration of WEF nexus in pursuit of the sustainable development goals is a great challenge, which stems from the fact that it is not business as usual.

Water policies are often organized along functional silos with fragmented agenda setting with poor infrastructure for policy integration across the sectors. But it is too simple and risky to just replace vertical silos by horizontal ones. Effective institutional arrangements facilitating policy integration are still subject to considerable uncertainty due to differences in environments. 

The question now, what are the ways to improve resource values in order to achieve higher resource use efficiency in the WEF nexus.  

Resource-use efficiency cannot be captured (achieved) in isolation. New policies and tools are needed to induce resource use efficiency:

To optimize the market and trade solutions:

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