The interconnectedness of water, energy and food production cycles translates into the interdependence of water, energy and food pricing. This paper interrogates the level of interconnectedness between these systems in South Africa and discusses how energy and water costs influence food prices in the country and affect the country's level of food security. The paper emphasizes that sustainable solutions to food security necessitate integrative thinking in the process of strategic planning for these resources.

We evaluate the impact of explicitly representing irrigated land and water scarcity in an economy‐wide model with and without a global carbon policy. The analysis develops supply functions of irrigable land from a water resource model for 282 river basins and applies them within a global economy‐wide model. The analysis reveals two key findings. First, explicitly representing irrigated land has a small impact on global food, bioenergy and deforestation outcomes. This is because this modification allows irrigated and rainfed land to expand in different proportions, which counters the effect of rising marginal costs for the expansion of irrigated land. Second, changes in water availability have small impacts on global food prices, bioenergy production, land use change and the overall economy, even with large‐scale (c. 150 exajoules) bioenergy production, due in part to endogenous irrigation and storage responses. However, representing water scarcity and changes in water availability can be important regionally, with relatively arid areas and/or areas with rapidly growing populations fully exhausting our estimated maximum irrigation capacity that allows for improved irrigation efficiency, lining of canals to limit water loss, and expanding storage to fully capture average annual water flows.

In the coming 25-30 years global food production will have to be doubled in order to maintain food security at the global level. With respect to this to a certain extent the advantage is that food prices have increased over the past seven to eight years, and especially during the past two years. This may put farmers who are able to sell at least a certain part of their harvest in a better position, provided that the increase in production costs is at a lower level. On the other hand it puts the poor people in the cities of the emerging and least developed countries in an increasingly complicated situation as it will require more of them to remain able to purchase their food. In this paper we give a summarised overview of the role of water management for global food production and poverty alleviation. It turns out that to maintain food security in the near and medium‐term future a substantially larger increase in production will be required than continuation of the present trend. While this is quite an effort, one may expect that at least for the near future the costs will remain at the present high level and that they may even increase further.

Assessing future water requirements for feeding the growing population of Central Asia can improve understanding of the projected water supply scenarios in the region. Future water requirements will be partially determined by the dietary habits of the populations, and are thus responsive to significant variation of income levels. Using Uzbekistan as an example, this study projects the water footprints of income driven changes on the population's diet in Central Asia. To reveal the influence of large income changes on dietary habits a Normalized Quadratic-Quadratic Expenditure System was calibrated and applied to data from 2009. The national water footprints of food consumption in Uzbekistan were projected until 2034 by applying the parameterized demand system to estimate the respective water footprint values. The results showed that for Uzbekistan the projected increase in the food consumption water footprint would be primarily linked to income growth rather than population growth. Due to the high water footprint of common food products, the composition of the population’s diet, and responsiveness to income, economic growth is expected to put greater pressure on water resources in Uzbekistan unless proper measures are undertaken.

Groundwater depletion in India is a result of water, energy, and food policies that have given rise to a nexus where growth in agriculture has been supported by unsustainable trends in water and energy use. This nexus emanates from India’s policy of providing affordable calories to its large population. This requires that input prices are kept low, leading to perverse incentives that encourage groundwater overexploitation. The paper argues that solutions to India’s groundwater problems need to be embedded within the current context of its water-energy-food nexus. Examples are provided of changes underway in some water-energy-food policies that may halt further groundwater depletion.

Recognizing the importance of policy debate and knowledge sharing in the field of development, the Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development and the World Bank (Middle East and North Africa Region) agreed in March 2010 to hold joint high-level development seminars around issues pertaining to the Arab World. These were to be known as the Arab Development Symposia (ADS) and will be held on a regular basis, every 18 months or so, at the Arab Fund premises in Kuwait. The goal was to provide an opportunity for policymakers, practitioners and academicians to share ideas and experiences on topics which are high on the Arab development agenda. As such, the ADS series complement other fora for research and knowledge sharing and dissemination such as the Economic Research Forum (ERF) and the Research Initiative for Arab Development (RIAD).

Recognizing the importance of policy debate and knowledge sharing in the field of development, the Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development and the World Bank (Middle East and North Africa Region) agreed in March 2010 to hold joint high-level development seminars around issues pertaining to the Arab World. These were to be known as the Arab Development Symposia (ADS) and will be held on a regular basis, every 18 months or so, at the Arab Fund premises in Kuwait. The goal was to provide an opportunity for policymakers, practitioners and academicians to share ideas and experiences on topics which are high on the Arab development agenda. As such, the ADS series complement other fora for research and knowledge sharing and dissemination such as the Economic Research Forum (ERF) and the Research Initiative for Arab Development (RIAD).

The authors of the recently completed Comprehensive Assessment of Water Management in Agriculture (CA) concluded that there are sufficient water resources to produce food for a growing population but that trends in consumption, production and environmental patterns, if continued, will lead to water crises in many parts of the world. Only if we act to improve water use will we meet the acute fresh water challenge. Recent spikes in food prices, partially caused by the increasing demand for agricultural products in non-food uses, underline the urgent need to invest in agricultural production, of which water management is a crucial part. The world experienced similar pressure on per capita food supplies and food prices in the 1960s and 1970s, but the challenges now are different than those we experienced 50 years ago. The world's population is substantially larger, there are many more people living in poverty, and the costs of many agricultural inputs are much higher. The current situation and the long-term outlook require a fresh look at approaches that combine different elements such as the importance of access to water for the poor, providing multiple ecosystem services, rainwater management, adapting irrigation to new needs, enhancing water productivity, and promoting the use of low-quality water in agriculture. This special issue highlights the analysis behind a number of policy options identified by the CA, a five-year multi-disciplinary research program involving 700 scientists. This introductory article sets the background and context of this special issue, introduces the key recommendations from the CA and summarizes the papers in this issue.