Tools for tackling the water-energy-food nexus

• Authors: Edward A. Byers
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

Researchers and practitioners have developed many tools to study the water-energy-food nexus at a variety of scales and perspectives in order to aid decision-making. However, there is a recognised lack of tools that consider these interdependent and complex interactions in an integrated fashion. Whether to connect and federate wellestablished modelling systems and approaches, which may be challenging, or to design truly integrated tools for holistic consideration of the nexus issues, is also debated. This paper discusses four distinctly different approaches which appear to have wide-scale applicability, although demonstration of these approaches in multiple cases (besides the Polestar model which is already regional/ global) is yet to be applied. Sustainable implementation of any tools will require greater accessibility such that they may be more widely deployed by practitioners. Harmonisation of results and insights between different scales, so that decision-makers may consider global-local impacts, also remains a challenge.

Keywords

EN

water-energy-food nexus; tools; governance

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

Dates

published

2015-01-01

received

2014-06-23

accepted

2015-09-30

online

2015-12-17

Contributors

author

Edward A. Byers

• Devonshire building 3rd floor, School of Civil Engineering & Geosciences, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, UK. [phone]

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Identifiers

DOI

10.1515/cass-2015-0019