Nexus Thinking at River Basin Scale: Food, Water and Welfare

Roberto D Ponce Oliva,Esteban Arias Montevechio,Francisco J Fernández,Natalia Julio,Alejandra Stehr,Felipe Vasquez-Lavín

doi:10.3390/w13071000

Abstract

Water resources face an unparalleled confluence of pressures, with agriculture and urban growth as the most relevant human-related stressors. In this context, methodologies using a Nexus framework seem to be suitable to address these challenges. However, the urban sector has been commonly ignored in the Nexus literature. We propose a Nexus framework approach, considering the economic dimensions of the interdependencies and interconnections among agriculture (food production) and the urban sector as water users within a common basin. Then, we assess the responses of both sectors to climatic and demographic stressors. In this setting, the urban sector is represented through an economic water demand at the household level, from which economic welfare is derived. Our results show that the Nexus components here considered (food, water, and welfare) will be negatively affected under the simulated scenarios. However, when these components are decomposed to their particular elements, we found that the less water-intensive sector—the urban sector—will be better off since food production will leave significant amounts of water available. Moreover, when addressing uncertainty related to climate-induced shocks, we could identify the basin resilience threshold. Our approach shows the compatibilities and divergences between food production and the urban sector under the Nexus framework.

Highlights

Introduction published maps and institutional affilThe environment and the economy are closely interconnected, with the environment playing a twofold role as input supplier and pollutant reservoir, contributing, in the end, to the direct and indirect enhancement of human welfare [1]
Our Nexus assessment captures the driving forces behind water allocation across sectors, in which both water users—farmers and urban households—define their water consumption decisions aimed at allocating the resource to its most valuable use in terms of economic value
The food component breakdowns into four elements: tons produced of cereals, tons produced of fruits, tons produced of annual crops, and tons produced of other crops

Summary

Introduction

The environment and the economy are closely interconnected, with the environment playing a twofold role as input supplier and pollutant reservoir, contributing, in the end, to the direct and indirect enhancement of human welfare [1] Within this environmental role, natural resource availability is limited. Resource allocation across different economic sectors generates trade-off effects, which will likely increase due to the expected future climatic and demographic conditions [2,3]. These interlinkages and trade-off effects are evident when considering the water resources used by two particular sectors: the urban and agricultural sectors. Climate conditions are likely to affect urban households’

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion