Abstract
The Water-Food-Energy Nexus can support a general model of sustainable development, balancing resources with increasing economic/productive expectations, as e.g., in agriculture. We synthesise lessons from Greece's practical and research experience, identify knowledge and application gaps, and propose a novel conceptual framework to tackle these challenges. Thessaly (Central Greece), the country's driest region and largest agricultural supplier is used as an example. The area faces a number of water quantity and quality issues, ambitious production-economic objectives, continuous (historically) drought and flood events, conflicts, administrative and economic issues, under serious climate change impacts. A detailed assessment of the current situation is carried out, covering all these aspects, for the first time in an integrated way. Collaboration gaps among different stakeholders are identified as the biggest impediment to socially acceptable actions. For the first time, to our knowledge, the Nexus is set as a keystone to develop a novel framework to reverse the situation and achieve sustainable management under socially acceptable long-term visions. The proposed framework is based on Systems' Theory, innovation, uses a multi-disciplinary platform to bring together all relevant stakeholders, provides scientific support and commitment, and makes use of technological advances for the system's improvement.
Highlights
Water-Food-Energy Nexus is imposing new challenges to research and modelling, as a result of the integration and complexity of these fields, while sharing same concerns and goals
Given the absence and/or poor performance of the existing mechanisms to deal with larger scale—than the limits of the Basin District—actions, address issues affecting the nexus, the inability of the local authorities to undertake and complete the planned works, leading to unexploited EU funds, the formation of a National Water Management Body (NWMB) was considered necessary from the participants
The situation in the Basin District of Thessaly, one of the most challenging case-studies in Europe, regarding water scarcity, was analysed, providing a comprehensive review for each aspect of the problem for the first time so far, to our knowledge. Another novel element is the combination of a “whole-ofsystems” approach (SIA) including a “whole-of-environment” sub-systemic approach (FILLM)
Summary
Water-Food-Energy Nexus is imposing new challenges to research and modelling, as a result of the integration and complexity of these fields, while sharing same concerns and goals. The region accounts only for the 5% of the national GDP (7,853 out of 155,780 millione in 2018), it is the second biggest agricultural producer in the country (935 millione of Gross-Value-Added from agriculture) (ELSTAT, 2021). It is the largest water consumer of the country and one of its driest areas with an average precipitation of 600–800 mm/year and average annual temperature of 16–17◦C. Wheat and other cereals (except maize) are the main crops, followed by cotton, and tree-crops
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