Water-Energy-Food nexus: framing the opportunities, challenges and synergies for implementing the SDGs

Abstract

The Water-Energy-Food Nexus has been promoted by a number of prominent and influential global policy actors over the last couple of years. Increasingly, the concept has emerged as a major research, policy and planning instrument to govern and address demand and supply challenges across four main development sectors: water, energy, food and ecosystems. These sectors are often considered within an interdependent relationship and intertwined framework for balancing tradeoffs and identifying synergies and opportunities. This article frames the water-energy-food nexus as a crucial policy and planning instrument for strengthening cross-sector interactions and highlights the opportunities and challenges for doing so. The article is divided into four main sections. The first section describes the major linkages between water and energy and shows that the links between water and energy goes far beyond where water and energy are needed for each other. The second section describes other nexus dimensions beyond water and energy to include dimensions such as food, ecosystems and climate change for example. The key challenges in pursuing the nexus perspective in integrated planning and management of natural resources are presented in the third section and lastly, as a way of concluding, the article outlines some of the measures that are needed to operationalize the nexus perspective. Considering the implications of this analysis for the implementation of SDGs would be an important undertaking going forward for the operations of development agencies and the means of ensuring that the interdependences among sectors are taken into account in policy formulation and implementation.