Water, energy, and food nexus: A basis for strategic planning for natural resources.

摘要

Our global community is facing unprecedented risks and challenges that are directly linked to the way we currently understand and manage our resources. Providing sustainable solutions to overcome present challenges poses the need to study the existent interlinkages between these resources. This paper presents water, energy, and food as main systems that form a nexus, which itself is affected by defined external factors. The nature of the intimate relation between water, energy, and food forces a paradigm shift in the management approach; moving from silos to more integrative approaches. This paper further introduces a new proposed scenario-based framework and set of methodologies that not only define and discover the level of interconnectedness between water, energy and food, but provides explicit quantifications for them. It is used as a base for a multidimensional tool that quantifies resource demands according to proposed scenario variations. Data from Qatar is used for a case study to help evaluate the proposed tool structure and its overall performance. "Sustainability Index" criteria and utility are introduced as a way of identifying locally favorable scenarios.;The presented WEF nexus framework and tool provide a dynamic model for systematic integration of resources in the planning and decision making processes. Promoting integrative thinking in the process of strategic planning comes through highlighting the intimate level of interconnectedness between these systems.