Connecting cities and their environments: Harnessing the water-energy-food nexus for sustainable urban development

• Authors: Arthur Chan
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

Thousands of years of development have made the production and consumption of water, energy, and food for urban environments more complex. While the rise of cities has fostered social and economic progress, the accompanying environmental pressures threaten to undermine these benefits. The compounding effects of climate change, habitat loss, pollution, overexploitation (in addition to financial constraints) make the individual management of these three vital resources incompatible with rapidly growing populations and resource-intensive lifestyles. Nexus thinking is a critical tool to capture opportunities for urban sustainability in both industrialised and developing cities. A nexus approach to water, energy, and food security recognises that conventional decisionmaking, strictly confined within distinct sectors, limits the sustainability of urban development. Important nexus considerations include the need to collaborate with a wide spectrum of stakeholders, and to “re-integrate” urban systems. This means recognising the opportunities coming from the interconnected nature of cities and metropolitan regions, including links with rural environments and wider biophysical dynamics.

Keywords

EN

water-energy-food nexus; urban resilience; resource efficiency; sustainable cities; urban governance

• Publisher: Sciendo
• Journal: Change and Adaptation in Socio-Ecological Systems
• Year: 2015
• Volume: 2
• Issue: 1

Dates

published

2015-01-01

received

2014-06-24

accepted

2015-09-30

online

2015-12-17

Contributors

author

Arthur Chan

• International Development Research Centre (Ottawa, Canada) - Climate Change and Water Program, Canada

References

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Identifiers

DOI

10.1515/cass-2015-0017