Food, energy, and water (FEW) are among the essential resources for living on the earth. However, accelerating global population growth, increasing food, energy, water resource consumption, climate change, and uneven distribution of resources have limited FEW availability and accessibility, endangering both human life and the environment. Therefore, to balance human-environmental security, the sustainable usage and management of these three vital resources are necessary. Through this dissertation, my main goal is to use the FEW Nexus as a framework to quantify social and environmental security by investigating food, energy, and water resources systems and their interlinkages across scales with the final goal of informing decision-makers and development actors to develop new solutions to maximize the synergies among resources and optimize their social-environmental impacts. In that regard, I utilized and developed FEW nexus models to inform regional management decisions that enhances FEW resources security with the focus on 1) human access to enough and safe resources and 2) environmental quality induced by food production and consumption. With this dissertation, I presented an approach to quantify FEW security at regional scale and highlighted cases in Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia where national statistics leave out important regional variation. The outcome was an integrated approach to quantify security measures that can be implemented at multiple spatial scales and institutional levels. This approach can not only provide insight into FEW security in Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia but can also be an effective tool for assessing multiple development priorities simultaneously throughout the world. In support of the Chesapeake Bay Watershed restoration and water quality improvement, I focused on the food and agricultural system as the primary source of nitrogen pollution in the watershed and a main driver of water quality degradation in the Bay. In this regard, I created a mass flow model of nitrogen embedded in the food production chain throughout the Chesapeake Bay Watershed that separates phases of the production and consumption processes for crops, live animals, and animal products and considers commodity trade at each phase by combining aspects of both nitrogen footprint and nitrogen budget models. Also, by tracking nitrogen embedded in products imported and exported in these processes, I distinguished between direct nitrogen pollution and nitrogen pollution externalities (displaced N pollution from other regions) from outside of the Bay. Using the developed model, I determined the spatiotemporal drivers of nitrogen loss to the environment from the food chain within the watershed. I also show that at the watershed scale, trade has reduced the food chain nitrogen loss by about 40 million metric tons. The model's ability to distinguish between nitrogen loss from local and non-local (due to trade) sources makes it a potential tool to optimize regional domestic production and trade to meet local watershed's human protein needs while minimizing the resulting nitrogen loss. Overall, this model has the potential to quantify the effect of various decision scenarios, including trade, dietary choices, production patterns, and agricultural practices, on the food production chain nitrogen loss at multiple scales and so as a metric to evaluate environmental protection futures. Using the nitrogen flow model of Chesapeake Bay Watershed, I completed scenario analysis to investigate the effects of simulated future agricultural changes and management scenarios on agricultural N loss in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed, focusing on the food production chain's most influential factors (drivers of N loss). I tested the effects of future scenarios, including crop and animal production in 2050, management scenarios focusing on crop and animal production efficiency improvement in 2020, and a combined scenario of these two scenarios in 2050 on agricultural N loss reduction. Through this work, I concluded that, considering both future and management scenarios (combined scenario), N loss from food production chain will drop compared to the baseline scenario, implying that despite an increase in the future N loss due to the projected agriculture intensification, we can still reduce the N loss if we improve the controlling factors for the efficiency of crops and animals. The results can improve water quality in the Bay by informing targeted management decisions at croplands and livestock farms to diminish N loss inputs in the watershed.

Water, Energy and Food are the very basic necessities of human life and all the three of them are interconnected with each other, this connection being called the Water-Energy-Food nexus. Water is an inevitable element to energy and food systems to work. Water is essential for the growth of crops and produce energy and it consumes a lot of energy to treat and move water. Food and energy are equally dependent upon each other as well. This book highlights with various examples and case studies from around the World, the importance of this concept.

This Handbook provides a comprehensive overview of how water, energy and food are interconnected, comprising a coherent system: the nexus. It considers the interlinkages between natural resources, governance processes seeking coherence among water, energy and food policies, and the adoption of transdisciplinary approaches in the field.

The project titled “The Water-Energy-Food Nexus: Global, Basin and Local Case Studies of Resource Use Efficiency under Growing Natural Resource Scarcity“ (2015-2018), which was supported by the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, Germany, and was undertaken as part of the CGIAR Research Program on Water, Land and Ecosystems. The project set out to develop research methodologies and insights globally as well as for the Eastern Nile Technical Regional Organization (ENTRO) of the Nile Basin Initiative (NBI) and Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan to support efforts for enhanced water, energy and food security and environmental sustainability. The toolkit describes both qualitative and quantitative methods that have been used in the research project. It is not meant to be an exhaustive list of information and tools related to the analysis of the water, energy and food (WEF) nexus. The overall focus of the tools has been on economic analysis of the linkages across water, energy and food--to complement other studies and method developments that focus on biophysical linkages across the WEF nexus. The toolkit is aimed, primarily, at researchers interested in the analysis of the water, energy and food nexus. However, the studies summarized here also provide insights for practitioners implementing Nexus projects.

The world of development thinkers and practitioners is abuzz with a new lexicon: the idea of "the nexus" between water, food, and energy which is intuitively compelling. It promises better integration of multiple sectoral elements, a better transition to greener economies, and sustainable development. However, there appears to be little agreement on its precise meaning, whether it only complements existing environmental governance approaches or how it can be enhanced in national contexts. One current approach to the nexus treats it as a risk and security matter while another treats it within economic rationality addressing externalities across sector. A third perspective acknowledges it as a fundamentally political process requiring negotiation amongst different actors with distinct perceptions, interests, and practices. This perspective highlights the fact that technical solutions for improving coherence within the nexus may have unintended and negative impacts in other policy areas, such as poverty alleviation and education. The Water–Food–Energy Nexus: Power, Politics and Justice lays out the managerial-technical definitions of the nexus and challenges these conceptions by bringing to the forefront the politics of the nexus, around two key dimensions – a dynamic understanding of water–food–energy systems, and a normative positioning around nexus debates, in particular around social justice. The authors argue that a shift in nexus governance is required towards approaches where limits to control are acknowledged, and more reflexive/plural strategies adopted. This book will be of interest to academic researchers, policy makers, and practitioners in the fields of international development studies, environmental politics, and science and technology studies, as well as international relations.

Water, energy and food are key resources to sustain life, and are the fundamental to national, regional and global economies. These three resources are interlinked in multiple ways, and the term “nexus” captures the interconnections. The nexus has been discussed, debated, researched, and advocated widely but the focus is often on the pairings of “water-energy” or “water-food” or “energy-food”. To really benefit from the nexus approach in terms of resource use efficiency it is essential to understand, operationalize and practice the nexus of all three resources. As demand for these resources increases worldwide, using them sustainability is a critical concern for scientists and citizens, governments and policy makers. Volume highlights include: Contributions to the global debate on water-energy-food nexus Examples of the nexus approach in practice from different regions of the world Perspectives on the future of the nexus agenda Water-Energy-Food Nexus: Theories and Practices is a valuable resource for students, research scholars and professionals in academic institutions with strong interests in interdisciplinary research involving geography, earth science, environmental science, environmental management, sustainability science, international development, and ecological economics. The volume will also be useful for professionals, practitioners and consultants in /NGOs, government, and international agencies. Read an interview with the editors to find out more: https://eos.org/editors-vox/working-towards-a-sustainable-future

The world is on the brink of the greatest crisis it has ever faced: a spiraling lack of fresh water. Groundwater is drying up, even as water demands for food production, for energy, and for manufacturing are surging. Water is already emerging as a headline geopolitical issue—and worsening water security will soon have dire consequences in many parts of the global economic system. Directed by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon at the 2008 Davos Annual Meeting, the World Economic Forum assembled the world’s foremost group of public, private, non-governmental-organization and academic experts to examine the water crisis issue from all perspectives. The result of their work is this forecast—a stark, non-technical overview of where we will be by 2025 if we take a business-as-usual approach to (mis)managing our water resources. The findings are shocking. Perhaps equally stunning are the potential solutions and the recommendations that the group presents. All are included in this landmark publication. Water Security contains compelling commentary from leading decision-makers, past and present. The commentary is supported by analysis from leading academics of how the world economy will be affected if world leaders cannot agree on solutions. The book suggests how business and politics need to manage the energy-food-water-climate axis as leaders negotiate the details of the climate regime that replace Kyoto Protocols.