Water- food- energy- ecosystem nexus model development: Resource scarcity and regional development

Abstract

Demographic, economic, social, and climate change are all putting pressure increasing on natural resources through global energy, food, and water demand growth, which threatens the well-being of the ecosystems. To address this scientific and political challenge, a dual-purpose optimization tool has been proposed with the approach of minimizing the environmental effects and development costs of the region in line with resource consumption management, which optimally takes resources from the ecosystem, and regarding development approach (ecotourism development in this study), it has suggested the optimal strategy to improve the economic benefits. Moreover, this model is able to propose some effective management policies on resource planning at the regional level. This approach has been applied to Shif Island in the south of Iran. The main results are: (i) The regional potential has the possibility of increasing more than 2067 tourism numbers per year, which can compensate for a large part of the regional development costs. (ii) The regional management strategy of wastewater and solid waste resources with the view of the nexus approach development of the system (development of the eco-industrial park) and the ecosystem (the relationship between the soil and plant model) and the system development models in line with the regional demand), can reduce waste production to about zero and provide more than 90% of the region's fertilizer needs in order to improve the ecosystem's performance. (iii) In this model, the producers of materials and energy are the main inputs of the ecosystem, and the outputs of the ecosystem include the outputs of the agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry, and fishing process in the remote areas, as well as mineral resources (industrial raw materials and fossil resources), renewable energy, etc. Consumers consist of humans and living organisms of the urban-rural ecosystem.In general, in this paper, the aim is to develop a practical method for analyzing the symbiosis of living and non-living parts of the ecosystem in terms of water- Food-Energy and Ecosystem nexus model. In this regard, a hybrid technology model has been suggested to minimize the dynamic cost of changes in line to reach an optimal path for the development of living and non-living interaction.