Arsenic poisoning constitutes a major threat to humans, causing various health problems. Almost everywhere across the world certain “hotspots” have been detected, putting in danger the local populations, due to the potential consumption of water or food contaminated with elevated concentrations of arsenic. According to the relevant studies, Asia shows the highest percentage of significantly contaminated sites, followed by North America, Europe, Africa, South America and Oceania. The presence of arsenic in ecosystems can originate from several natural or anthropogenic activities. Arsenic can be then gradually accumulated in different food sources, such as vegetables, rice and other crops, but also in seafood, etc., and in water sources (mainly in groundwater, but also to a lesser extent in surface water), potentially used as drinking-water supplies, provoking their contamination and therefore potential health problems to the consumers. This review reports the major areas worldwide that present elevated arsenic concentrations in food and water sources. Furthermore, it also discusses the sources of arsenic contamination at these sites, as well as selected treatment technologies, aiming to remove this pollutant mainly from the contaminated waters and thus the reduction and prevention of population towards arsenic exposure.

Composite health measures are increasingly applied in studies aiming at describing the burden of diseases, and food and water-borne diseases (FWDs) are no exception. The Burden of Communicable Diseases in Europe (BCoDE) is a project led and funded by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) with the purpose of encouraging and empowering public health experts in the estimation of the impact of communicable diseases expressed in Disability Adjusted Life Years (DALYs). Calculation of DALYs and a critical assessment of burden of disease outputs require a thorough consideration of a number of methodological and epidemiological decisions ranging from modelling (e.g. incidence versus prevalence), disease model parameters (e.g. risks of developing complications or death) and the data feeding the number of cases.Burden of disease studies produce useful results for public health decision-making, in particular when they aim at informing preventive strategies. For this purpose, we attributed FWDs results from the BCoDE 2015 study to different exposure routes. We discuss these in the more general perspective of generating burden of disease evidence for planning and prioritisation, including the potentials and limitations of its methodology.

The escalating human demand for food, water, energy, fibres and minerals have resulted in increasing commercial pressures on land and water resources, which are partly reflected by the recent increase in transnational land investments. Studies have shown that many of the land-water issues associated with land acquisitions are directly related to the areas of energy and food production. This paper explores the land-water-energy-food nexus in relation to large-scale farmland investments pursued by investors from European countries. The analysis is based on a “resource assessment approach” which evaluates the linkages between land acquisitions for agricultural (including both energy and food production) and forestry purposes, and the availability of land and water in the target countries. To that end, the water appropriated by agricultural and forestry productions is quantitatively assessed and its impact on water resource availability is analysed. The analysis is meant to provide useful information to investors from EU countries and policy makers on aspects of resource acquisition, scarcity, and access to promote responsible land investments in the target countries.

Rapidly increasing populations coupled with increased food demand requires either an expansion of agricultural land or sufficient production gains from current resources. However, in a changing world, reduced water availability might undermine improvements in crop and grass productivity and may disproportionately affect different parts of the world. Using multi-model studies, the potential trends, risks and uncertainties to land use and land availability that may arise from reductions in water availability are examined here. In addition, the impacts of different policy interventions on pressures from emerging risks are examined.Results indicate that globally, approximately 11% and 10% of current crop- and grass-lands could be vulnerable to reduction in water availability and may lose some productive capacity, with Africa and the Middle East, China, Europe and Asia particularly at risk. While uncertainties remain, reduction in agricultural land area associated with dietary changes (reduction of food waste and decreased meat consumption) offers the greatest buffer against land loss and food insecurity.

Hydropower plays an important role as the global energy system moves towards a less carbon-intensive and sustainable future as promoted under the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This article provides a systematic review of the impacts from policy, climate change and Water-Energy-Food (W-E-F) nexus on hydropower development at global scale. Asia, Africa and Latin America are hotspots promoting hydropower development with capacity expansion, while Europe and North America focus on performance improvement and environment impacts mitigation. Climate change is projected to improve gross hydropower potential (GHP) at high latitude of North Hemisphere and tropical Africa and decrease that in the US, South Africa and south and central Europe. Analysis from W-E-F nexus highlights the importance of integrated approaches as well as cross-sectoral coordination so as to improve resources use efficiency and achieve sustainable hydropower development. These three factors together shape the future of hydropower and need to be considered for planning and operation purpose.

Understanding environmental impacts of complete food supply chains is important for the food industry to help devise strategies for reducing the impacts of current and future products. Breakfast cereals are one of the most important foods consumed in many countries, but their environmental impacts are currently unknown. Therefore, this study explores the environmental sustainability issues in the food–energy–water nexus by considering breakfast cereals manufactured by one of the world’s largest producers, Kellogg Europe. A life cycle assessment has been carried out for these purposes with the aim of helping the Company to integrate environmental sustainability considerations into the design of their products and packaging. The results indicate that the average global warming potential (GWP) of Kellogg’s breakfast cereals is 2.64 kg CO2 eq. per kg of product. The main GWP hotspots are the ingredients (48%) and energy used in the manufacturing process (23%); packaging and transport contribute 15% each. Rice is the single largest contributor to the GWP of the ingredients (38%). The manufacturing stage is the main contributor of primary energy demand (34%), while the ingredients are responsible for more than 90% of the water footprint. The ingredients are also the main contributors to most other environmental impacts, including land use (97%), depletion of elements (61%), eutrophication (71%), human toxicity (54%) and photochemical smog (50%). The impacts from packaging are high for freshwater and marine toxicity. The contribution of transport is significant for depletion of elements and fossil resources (23%), acidification (32%), ozone depletion (28%) and photochemical smog (24%). Improvement opportunities explored in the paper include better agricultural practices, recipe modifications, improved energy efficiency of manufacturing processes and use of alternative packaging. Impacts from consumption are also discussed.

Climate and socio-economic change impacts are likely to cross traditional sectoral and regional boundaries with cascading indirect, and potentially far-reaching, repercussions. This is particularly important for the food-water-land-ecosystems (FWLE) nexus, which is fundamental for the achievement of at least six of the seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). A holistic understanding of the FWLE nexus interactions and how and to what extent various exogenous drivers of change affect them is therefore central to cross-sectoral adaptation planning. Here, we present such an integrated assessment for Europe applying a regional Integrated Assessment Platform (IAP). The study explores a wide range of future climate and socio-economic scenarios using more than 900 model simulations. The results show that food production is likely to be the main driver of Europe's future landscape change dynamics (with or without climate change). Agriculture and land use allocation is often driven by complex cross-sectoral interactions with cascading effects on other sectors such as forestry, biodiversity, and water under the various scenarios. The modelling also highlighted that while sustaining current levels of food production at the European level could be achievable under most climate and socio-economic scenarios, there are significant regional differences with winners and losers. The analysis raises the question of whether current production and consumption policies are sustainable in the long-term. Such systematic integrated model-based analysis plays a crucial role in informing development of cross-sectoral policies that maximise synergies and minimise trade-offs across nexus sectors, regions, and scenarios. This is essential to achieve the SDGs.

The “nexus” is a potentially very appropriate approach to enhance resource efficiency and good governance in transboundary basins. Until now, however, evidence has been confined to isolated case studies and the nexus approach remains largely undefined. The methodology presented in this paper, developed for preparing a series of nexus assessments of selected river basins under the Water Convention of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), is a timely contribution to this ongoing debate. The nexus assessment of a transboundary basin has the objective of identifying trade-offs and impacts across sectors and countries and to propose possible policy measures and technical actions at national and transboundary levels to reduce intersectoral tensions. This is done jointly with policy makers and local experts. Compared to an Integrated Water Resource Management approach, the water energy food ecosystems nexus approach concurrently considers multiple sectors and their evolution. This offers the opportunity to better involve key economic sectors—energy and agriculture in particular—in the dialogue over transboundary water resource uses, protection and management.

Water is considered the bloodstream of the biosphere, but its management is one of the most important challenges for human development. In view of the sustainable water management, several approaches have been proposed: Integrated Water Resources Management, Adaptive Management and, more recently, Water–Energy–Food (WEF) Nexus. Considering these approaches, over the last few decades, extensive efforts have been made to develop assessment methods and tools framed within the paradigm of sustainable development. As part of a holistic assessment of water resources, the recent approach based upon the WEF Nexus narrows down the consideration of intersectoral linkages to three dimensions that are of prominent interest, in particular in developing countries. This study presents a comprehensive indicator-based approach for the assessment of water, energy and food securities, with reference to the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations. The main ambition of the proposed approach is to provide a tool to monitor progresses, compare different geographical areas, highlight synergies and conflicts amongst and within the three dimensions of the WEF Nexus, and provide support for improved—more effective—management strategies to meet the goals. The proposed approach is demonstrated in the Ganges–Brahmaputra–Meghna (GBM) River Basin in Asia and to the Po River Basin in Europe. The comparative analysis suggests that WEF security is currently rather low in the GBM basin compared to the other case study and other parts of the world and allows the identification of which dimensions (indicators) require special attention on the part of local and global policy makers.

The focus of this study is to show that by understanding the food-energy-water nexus, potential unforeseen negative outcomes can be avoided in the pursuit of sustainable development. To do this, this paper uses a novel approach to compare a combined farm and short rotation coppice willow system, in which the willow was planted as a riparian buffer, with a food-only and an energy only system. The impact of each system was investigated through the lens of the food-energy-water nexus using life cycle assessment techniques. Data from previous research was adapted in order to quantify the impacts for a typical Irish dairy farm, which is indicative of intensive agriculture across Europe. On a typical Irish dairy farm, the implementation of a short rotation coppice willow riparian buffer strip could reduce total nitrogen and phosphorus leachate by 14% and 9% respectively. Total CO₂eq emissions could be reduced by 16.5% if energy from the willow displaces fossil fuels, while the impact on milk production and profit is minimal. Thus, the use of short rotation coppice willow as a riparian buffer strip has the potential to reduce strain on the entire food-energy-water nexus. By considering the food-energy-water nexus, the negative impacts of the food-only and energy-only systems were also highlighted.The paper also shows how a better understanding of the food-energy-water nexus supports the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and could help ameliorate the impact of climate change on the food-energy-water ecosystem.