Comparing the convergence and divergence within industrial ecology, circular economy, and the energy-water-food nexus based on resource management objectives

Abstract

The increasing need to conserve resources has led to the development of several concepts, tools, and frameworks to support optimum resource management (RM) in the past few decades. However, system designers and policy makers often find it difficult to navigate the wide array of available concepts. Energy-water-food nexus (EWF nexus), circular economy (CE), and industrial ecology (IE) are discussed in terms of their conceptual development, representative tools used to conduct analysis therein, and the performance indicators deployed to measure progress and performance. Unlike previous literature that focused on one or two of the aforementioned concepts in parallel, this review assesses the three concepts together based on the RM objectives. This review considers three popular concepts that support sustainable RM in terms of potential areas for convergence and divergence. The review is conducted in four stages: (i) identifying the research objective and relevant keywords after extracting articles from well-known databases; (ii) screening articles obtained from stage (i) by removing duplicates and applying predefined inclusion and exclusion criteria; (iii) reviewing the screened articles for eligibility; and (iv) defining the final list of articles to be included in the review and analysing them. The outcomes of this review suggest that the CE and EWF nexus are more flexible in terms of application scale (i.e. micro, meso, and macro), whereas IE is applied within industrial parks. Most EWF nexus studies focus on managing interlinkages and synergies between the three resources; however, CE and IE are more likely to focus on closing material/energy loops within defined system boundaries. This review sets the premise for future work, which can help align the three guiding concepts into a combined holistic effort to manage resources depending on the problem considered, either through a single framework or a coordinated effort wherein all three concepts are deployed.