During the second half of the 20th century the global food production more than doubled and thus responded to the doubling of world population. But the gains in food production came at a cost, leaving a significant environmental footprint on the ecosystem. Global cropland, plantations and pastures expanded, with large increases in fossil energy, water, and fertilizer inputs, imprinting considerable footprint on the environment. Information from pre eminent publications such as Nature, Science, PNAS and scholarly journals is synthesized to assess the water and energy footprints of global food production. The data show that the footprints are significant, both locally, national and globally and have consequences for global food security and ecosystem health and productivity. The literature nearly agrees that global food production system generates considerable environmental footprints and the situation would likely get worrisome, as global population grows by 50% by 2050. Investments are needed today to buffer the negative impacts of food production on the environment. Investments to boost water productivity and improve energy use efficiency in crop production are two pathways to reduce the environmental footprint.

The United Nation Sustainable Development Goals emphasized to meet the global food security challenges by mechanized farming; access of clean water challenges by renewable freshwater withdrawals; clean energy issues determined by clean fuel and cleaner technologies; and combat climate change by limiting anthropogenic emissions of carbon, fossil fuel, and Greenhouse Gas emissions in the air. This study examined the aforementioned United Nation Sustainable Development Goals in the context of Pakistan by using a time series data from 1970 to 2016. The study employed Tapio’s elasticity of decoupling state to analyze the relationship between water-energy-food resources and carbon-fossil-greenhouse gas emissions in a given country context. The results of Tapio elasticity found that carbon-fossil-greenhouse gas emissions’ contamination in water-energy-food’s resources are quite visible that exhibit weak decoupling state, expensive negative decoupling state, and strong decoupling state in the different decade’s data, which substantiate the ecological cost in water-energy-food’s resources. The results emphasized the need to adopt different sustainable instruments in a way to limit carbon-fossil-greenhouse gas emissions in water-energy-food resources through cleaner production technologies, renewable energy mix, environmental certification, anti-dumping tariff duty, strict environmental regulations, etc. These instruments would be helpful to achieve environmental sustainability agenda for mutual exclusive global gains.

Water–energy–food nexus has received global attention, as the interdependency of these resources is crucial to developing conceptual tools for environmental sustainability. Thus, water–energy–food nexus underpins economic development and improves life and well-being. We provide a critical assessment of extant literature on water–energy–food nexus using bibliometric analysis within the last 2 years. Using the keyword “Water-Energy-Food” from 2017 to 2020 in Scopus, data on 235 documents after preprocessing were used for further investigations. We found that scholarly research on water–energy–food nexus is expanding rapidly because of its policy implications. However, results and policy effects were heterogeneous because of a lack of a common conceptual framework of water–energy–food nexus—making the conceptual tool more challenging. Although renewable energy technologies have been described as the antidote for achieving environmental sustainability, however, a sustainability assessment revealed that while fossil fuel energy technologies compete with water withdrawal and consumption, some renewables compete with food for land-use—a situation that requires cost and benefits policy estimation. This article thus highlights that the effect of water–energy–food nexus on environmental sustainability depends on several socioeconomic factors that require attention.

This study attempts to quantify climate-induced increases in morbidity rates associated with food- and water-borne illnesses in the context of an urban coastal city, taking Beirut-Lebanon as a study area. A Poisson generalized linear model was developed to assess the impacts of temperature on the morbidity rate. The model was used with four climatic scenarios to simulate a broad spectrum of driving forces and potential social, economic and technologic evolutions. The correlation established in this study exhibits a decrease in the number of illnesses with increasing temperature until reaching a threshold of 19.2°C, beyond which the number of morbidity cases increases with temperature. By 2050, the results show a substantial increase in food- and water-borne related morbidity of 16 to 28% that can reach up to 42% by the end of the century under A1FI (fossil fuel intensive development) or can be reversed to ~0% under B1 (lowest emissions trajectory), highlighting the need for early mitigation and adaptation measures.

The water-energy-food (WEF) nexus has motivated several studies, opening space to provide robust support for the decision-making process. Certain studies seek to understand the interdependence of these three resources in a quantitative and/or qualitative manner, usually using total water, energy, and food indicators. However, in times of social, economic, and environmental crisis, national policies must be optimized, and hence it is necessary to evaluate marginal and critical indicators of each resource, i.e., sensitive indicators. Based on these indicators, we propose a methodology for assessing ecological efficiency (eco-efficiency) in industries using a multiregional input-output table, Data Envelopment Analysis, and the Malmquist index, with the main objective of internalizing normally overlooked impacts in the national policymaking process. For this, we present a quantitative assessment of the WEF nexus in the Brazilian food and beverage industry, since it is one of the pillars of the country's economy and has several positive and negative effects related to the WEF nexus, as well as a growth trend to meet rising food demand. From 2015 to 2019, this industry eco-efficiency was evaluated in terms of water stress, fossil energy consumption, and financial compensation to low-skilled workers. The main findings show that the Fish industry has the highest average eco-efficiency, with sustainable gains over the period, while the Meat cattle industry has the lowest average eco-efficiency. As a result, the Fish industry places less strain on these resources to generate the same socioeconomic benefits as others, resulting in less food and water insecurity, and should be prioritized in Brazil's national policies regarding industry expansion. We conclude that this methodology can help integrate WEF resources into national policy decision-making processes, allowing the identification of negative impacts that should be avoided or mitigated, as well as positive impacts that should be encouraged.

The increasing costs of energy and water, fossil fuel depletion, and food shortages caused by climate change challenge long-term sustainability of food, energy, and water (FEW) systems. In working toward sustainable development, a fundamental question for deciding on whether and how to invest in FEW systems is “how sustainable FEW systems are?”. In order to measure sustainability across the FEW systems, an integrated sustainability index (SI) is developed. The SI is comprised of three components; food, energy, and water. These components each consist of different sub-components (e.g. transportation fuel for energy component) that make up integrated FEW systems. The sustainability of an FEW system can be calculated using the integrated FEW SI, but a more thought provoking question is to understand how each sub-component affects overall sustainability of the system. This cannot be achieved without formulating the interconnections associated with FEW components. This study formulates interconnections associated with FEW components. In an effort to increase the degree to which the results would generalize to FEW systems with different scales, the calculations of the study are performed for a sustainable FEW system that can consistently yield food for a family of four (two adults and two children) and supply its own water and energy needs from sustainable sources. Also, the sustainability is measured for two systems located in two different climates; one is relatively cloudy and humid and the other is sunny and arid. The results show that the highest sustainability improvement in both climates is associated with irrigation sub-component. Not only a sustainable water supply for irrigation sub-component improves the sustainability of water component, it also improves food sustainability and consequently energy sustainability. This finding can be explained by the fact that the irrigation sub-component is a resource supplier for grain sub-component, and that is a resource supplier for transportation fuel sub-component.

The expected worldwide demand for agriculture, energy, and manufactured products will result in a supply chain that is increasingly dependent on exported rural products (e.g., livestock, cereal grains, fossil fuel, and biofuel). Rural areas such as the northern Great Plains are net exporters of food and energy, essentially “mining” valuable water and nutrient resources to do so. Rural areas are the foundation of supply chains; thus, to achieve sustainability, one must begin focusing at the source of the supply chain– with the farm, ranch, mine, or well. There are many knowledge gaps within the food–energy–water nexus in rural areas that shroud regional sustainability thresholds. Research and legislation are needed to address these critical issues.

Centralised production of essential products and services based on fossil fuels and large scale distribution infrastructures has contributed to a plethora of issues such as deterioration of ecosystems, social-economic injustice and depletion of resources. The establishment of local production systems that deliver various products for local consumption (e.g. food, energy and water) by making the best use of locally available renewable resources can potentially alleviate unsustainable resource consumption. The main objective of this work is to develop process systems engineering tools combined with the concept of resource accounting using exergy for the design of such local production systems. A general design framework comprising an optional preliminary design stage followed by a simultaneous design stage based on mathematical optimisation is proposed. The preliminary design stage considers each supply subsystem individually and allows insights into the potential interactions between them. The simultaneous design stage yields an optimal design of the local production system and has the capacity to include all design integration possibilities between the subsystems and generate a truly integrated design solution. The proposed methodology, which reflects generalised principles for designing local production systems, has been illustrated through a case study on the integrated design of the food-energy-water nexus for a designated eco-town in UK. It demonstrates the advantages of an integrated design of a system making use of local resources to meet its demands over a system relying on centralised supplies and a design without considering integration opportunities between subsystems.

Most South Asian countries have challenges in ensuring water, energy, and food (WEF) security, which are often interacting positively or negatively. To address these challenges, the nexus approach provides a framework to identify the interactions of the WEF sectors as an integrated system. However, most nexus studies only qualitatively discuss the interactions between these sectors. This study conducts a systematic analysis of the WEF security nexus in South Asia by using open data sources at the country scale. We analyze interactions between the WEF sectors statistically, defining positive and negative correlations between the WEF security indicators as synergies and trade-offs, respectively. By creating networks of the synergies and trade-offs, we further identify most positively and negatively influencing indicators in the WEF security nexus. We observe a larger share of trade-offs than synergies within the water and energy sectors and a larger share of synergies than trade-offs among the WEF sectors for South Asia. However, these observations vary across the South Asian countries. Our analysis highlights that strategies on promoting sustainable energy and discouraging fossil fuel use could have overall positive effects on the WEF security nexus in the countries. This study provides evidence for considering the WEF security nexus as an integrated system rather than just a combination of three different sectors or securities.

With the advantages of avoiding land-use competition, biomass from agricultural residues is a promising solution to alleviate the energy crisis and environmental problems. In the traditional biomass utilization management problem, few studies have considered that land and water are key resources for the sustainable development of biomass from a life cycle view. Concerning the complex food-water-energy nexus, this paper focuses on the synergetic management of crop planting structure and biomass utilization as a whole system. An integrated framework is proposed for the co-optimization of cropland distribution and biomass utilization pathway under multiple uncertainties. Base on interval programming and fuzzy set theory, a type-2 fuzzy interval linear programming model is developed to handle multiple uncertainties with various characteristics and provide the optimum strategies for decision makers with different risk preferences. The proposed framework is verified by a case study of Hebei Province, China. Moreover, the impacts of water shortage and the implementation of the carbon price on the optimized strategies, economic and environmental benefits are investigated to provide deeper management insights when facing complex external factors. The obtained results suggest that corn and wheat will still be the primary crops, and bioethanol production will gain priority in the biomass utilization pathways for economic purposes. Water resources availability will greatly affect the crop planting allocation as well as total benefits but barely influence the biomass utilization pathways. Furthermore, with the implementation of the carbon trade market, a higher carbon price will stimulate biomass pellets production to replace fossil fuel consumption and improve the economic benefits directly.