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.

• By 2030, a 40% increase in energy demand in the United States using current energy cooling systems, translate into a large increase in freshwater access needs, up to 165%
• Replacing 5-6% of energy consumption with biofuels could double water withdrawals for agriculture
• 76% increase in water demand for energy and industry will be required across Asia by 2030 compared to today
• Over the next 20 years, farmers will need to increase global agricultural production by 70-100%.
• More than 25% of this increase in grain demand will actually be due to changes in consumer diets
• By 2030, nearly 55% of the world’s population may be increasingly dependent on food (i.e. water) imports
• An increase in cereal imports could save Asia up to 12% of its irrigation water consumption  

The many interlinkages of global:

With Increasing Demands for water, energy, and food:  

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:

• Financing: Search new sources of financing
• Governance: Institutional changes, changes in legal frameworks à Decentralization, enabling legal framework through reform of water laws, property rights, separation of water and land rights
• Innovation: Stimulate innovation for efficient technology à Technological and most importantly institutional innovation for conserving water, and protecting ecosystem

To optimize the market and trade solutions:

• Value Resource: Implicit pricing has been considered to be a powerful tool to induce efficient use of resources in agriculture.
• Create incentives to increase farmers willingness to pay (WTP) for water  

Media

Taxonomy

• Sustainable Water Resource Management
• Water-Energy Nexus
• Energy-Water Nexus
• Water

3 Comments

1. This enlightened holistic approach is the true path forward to a survivable future.  The greatest problem facing our society is the dis-functional outmoded tendency to isolate any issue to solve it.  This is the opposite path to the course we should steer, that loses the interactive issues (good and bad) that result from disrupting the interactive web of life.  LIFE exists in the confusion of an inter-dependency that results in a somewhat balanced ecosystem dynamic.  It appears confused to the untrained eye, which loses the forest for trees, but when one quiets the confusion of our single-minded human perspective based approach, the web becomes clear and our disruptive influence more obvious.  At one time the number of humans was truly insignificant, we didn't matter, but today we have severely impacted every continent and every ocean from the surface to the deepest abyss.   This unsettling fact, along with dwindling natural resources should be scaring us into changing our ways and with the shift decisively focused upon  the circular economic model.  The exciting thing about this paradigm shift for developing countries is that by embracing this concept and steering this course, the developing countries could actually become more livable, with a higher quality of life than the developed countries now saddled with out dated, fragmented, essential infrastructure based upon a backwards, disfunctional, non-sustainable narrow minded course to disaster.   www.aquagen-isi.com "Utility of the Future" was created to provide communities with just such a holistic circular economic platform of sustainability and resiliency.

2. Fit-for-purpose water re-use for horticulture, available at climate scale now at www.baleen.com

3. We need to shift the sensibilities of water re-use for food production.   Creating a WEF nexus solution in utilizing wastewater as a source for energy via algae biotech enhancement.  This will reduce the costs associated with treatment while producing a highly oxygenated discharge that can be effectively utilized in hydroponics for high volume food production.  The community infrastructure become a sustainability platform for the community in water, energy, food and climate change mitigation.  We are very close to finding truly sustainable infrastructure solutions if we can release the outmoded perception that water from advanced treatment systems is something to be gotten rid of rather than something that is a flexible alternative resource in this precious resource.   We are doing this in our laboratory now.

   1 Comment reply

   1. There is so much untapped potential in layering of functions. In natural systems there is no waste. Transformation of our systems thinking to a zero waste model is key to this nexus and could be a driver.