The Water, Energy, Food, and Sustainability Nexus Decision Environment: A Multistakeholder Transdisciplinary Approach

Abstract

The water, energy, and food (WEF) nexus has gained particular attention in the sustainable development community. Making effective decisions in this environment is difficult. Entwinement from multiple sustainability dimensions and various stakeholder perspectives contribute to this difficulty. Stakeholders have differing goals, interests, and preferences for potential technological and developmental solutions that address WEF nexus concerns. A holistic sustainable management approach with supporting decision support can address these concerns. This article introduces such a holistic framework to address WEF-sustainability (WEFS) concerns. Using a joint neighborhood rough set, interval-valued hesitant fuzzy set, and regret theory technique, this article introduces a multistakeholder transdisciplinary method to support WEFS nexus decisions. An illustrative example integrates the multiple stakeholder and WEFS nexus factors. The illustrative example provides insights into the modeling effort and data requirements. Research, practical implications, along with limitations of the study—which are all discussed—provide a foundation for future research directions in this socio-environmentally important field.