Abstract
The food-energy-water (FEW) nexus approach has emerged as an alternative for managing these resources more efficiently. Work from studies conducted in the FEW nexus in Latin America is scarce in the scholarly literature. This study aims to develop a framework for water management at the FEW Nexus, with a focus on Colombia. The study focuses on a typical mixed land-use watershed in the Andean region with specific objectives being to: (1) characterize the watershed with respect to land use, climate, water resources, and other factors pertinent to the nexus; (2) explore the relationship between factors in the FEW nexus that may affect water management in terms of quality and availability; and (3) propose a methodology for conducting a FEW Nexus analysis for watersheds located in the Andean region. The results indicate that the Pereira/Dosquebradas urban area has a significant impact on the FEW nexus components in the Otun River Watershed (ORW). Subsequently, an urban FEW nexus framework is proposed for its implementation at the watershed.
Highlights
The food-energy-water (FEW) nexus approach has emerged as an alternative to meet the increasing food and energy demands due to population growth
The urban FEW nexus framework developed provides a comprehensive diagnosis of the state of the nexus elements and their interconnections considering: the multiple connections among the food, energy, and water components; the complexity of drawing system boundaries between the Pereira/Dosquebradas urban area and the rest of the Otun River Watershed (ORW); and the need to adapt to future conditions such as those related to population growth and climate
A characterization was conducted for the Otun River watershed based on which a framework for water management in the FEW nexus was developed
Summary
The food-energy-water (FEW) nexus approach has emerged as an alternative to meet the increasing food and energy demands due to population growth. In addition to the studies published in peer-review journals, reports have been published by international organizations, including the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC-CEPAL), the German Corporation for International Cooperation (GIZ), and the Global Canopy Programme [28,29,30,31,32] These reports depict the current status of the nexus in Latin American and the Caribbean and provide recommendations for moving forward into using a nexus approach as a planning and decision-making tool to optimize limited resources. The characterization of the study site was conducted based on analyses of climate data, changes in land use/land cover, the Otun River’s streamflow and water quality, population, and a general account of FEW nexus elements in the watershed. The complete list of weather, streamflow, and water quality stations can be found as Supplementary Materials (Supplementary Materials Table S1)
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