Food sovereignty is the rights of every nation to maintain and develop skills in producing basic foods, with respect for cultural and product diversity. The food sovereignty of a nation would be viable provided that the natural resources essential for plant growth are available and one of them is water. However, the increase of water demand far exceeds its availability, thus water shortage for agriculture with, as water is also needed by other organisms. As a tropical country, Indonesia has sufficient water supplies from both rainfall and groundwater. With good water management and conservation strategy, it should suffice the demand. Therefore, save the water movement as part of water sustainability program would highly contribute in achieving sustainable food production hence food sovereignty in the long run.

The increasing global demand for natural rubber (100% increase in the last 15 years) is for most part met by Malaysia and Indonesia, and – to a lesser extent – other countries in South-East Asia and Africa. The consequent expansion of rubber plantation has often occurred at the expenses of agricultural land for staple crops, particularly in South-East Asia, where 90% of the land suitable for agriculture is already under cultivation. Here we investigate the extent to which the ongoing increase in rubber production is competing with the food system and affecting the livelihoods of rural communities living in the production areas and their appropriation of natural resources, such as water. We also investigate to what extent the expansion of rubber plantations is taking place through large scale land acquisitions (LSLAs) and evaluate the impacts on rural communities. Our results show how rubber production needs more than 10 million ha of fertile land and up to 136–149 × 10⁹ m³ y⁻¹ of freshwater (125 × 10⁹ m³ y⁻¹ of green water and 11–24 × 10⁹ m³ y⁻¹ of blue water). These resources would be sufficient to produce enough food to significantly reduce malnourishment in Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam if replaced by rice production. Overall, natural rubber production has important environmental, social, and economic impacts. Indeed, despite their ability to bring employment and increase the average income of economically disadvantaged areas, rubber plantations may threaten the local water and food security and induce a loss of rural livelihoods – particularly when the new plantations result from LSLAs that displace semi-subsistence forms of production – thereby forcing the local populations to depend on global food markets.

Security measures of three resources; water, energy and food are analyzed for thirty two countries in the Asia Pacific region which are faced to Pacific Ocean, in terms of amounts of the resource, self-production, and diversity of sources of each resource. Diversity for all the three resources is also analyzed using surface water and groundwater for water sources; hydro power, geothermal power, solar, and biomass for energy; and cereals, vegetable, fruit, meat, and fish for food. We see high diversity of sources of water in the US and the Philippines, and a low diversity of sources of food in the US, Canada, and Indonesia. These security measures including water security show new hydrological insight for Asia-Pacific region.

Urbanisation will be one of the 21st century's most transformative trends. By 2050, it will increase from 55% to 68%, more than doubling the urban population in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. Urbanisation has multifarious (positive as well as negative) impacts on the wellbeing of humans and the environment. The 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) form the blueprint to achieve a sustainable future for all. Clean Water and Sanitation is a specific goal (SDG 6) within the suite of 17 interconnected goals. Here we provide an overview of some of the challenges that urbanisation poses in relation to SDG 6, especially in developing economies. Worldwide, several cities are on the verge of water crisis. Water distribution to informal settlements or slums in megacities (e.g. >50% population in the megacities of India) is essentially non-existent and limits access to adequate safe water supply. Besides due to poor sewer connectivity in the emerging economies, there is a heavy reliance on septic tanks, and other on-site sanitation (OSS) system and by 2030, 4.9 billion people are expected to rely on OSS. About 62–93% of the urban population in Vietnam, Sri Lanka, the Philippines and Indonesia rely on septic tanks, where septage treatment is rare. Globally, over 80% of wastewater is released to the environment without adequate treatment. About 11% of all irrigated croplands is irrigated with such untreated or poorly treated wastewater. In addition to acute and chronic health effects, this also results in significant pollution of often-limited surface and groundwater resources in Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. Direct and indirect water reuse plays a key role in global water and food security. Here we offer several suggestions to mitigate water and food insecurity in emerging economies.

Water, energy, and food (WEF) related sectors are important to support people’s life in a region. Resource evaluation is one of the stages in resource management to ensure that the existence of those sectors is provided sustainably. The assessment of the agglomeration level and growth of each sector in economic development can give better insights for local stakeholders either government bodies or private firms to improve sustainable management of these sectors. The objectives of this paper are to portray the agglomeration level and recent growth of WEF related sectors in local regions in Indonesia, and to determine possible sustainable development strategies. The location quotient (LQ) and competitive position (CP) analysis methods are employed in this regard. By analysing Gross Regional Domestic Product (GRDP) between 2000 and 2015, basic and non-basic sectors have been determined. Results show that the general characteristics of WEF related sectors in this region can be distinguished clearly based on its main economic development focus. Results show recent growth in WEF sectors locally, from which possible strategies for future sustainable development are formulated that could be considered in the evaluation and planning process. This approach can be expected to assist local government and stakeholders in undertaking preliminary evaluation, in particular the availability of WEF resources, ensuring that development meets local and national sustainable development targets.

Changes in watershed land cover have an impact on reducing water discharge, as well as other derivative impacts such as the productivity of food crops, horticulture, and plantations. This study tries to offer a conceptual model of the effect of changes in watershed land cover, water discharge, and food productivity through food crops, horticultural crops, and plantation crops. This study uses a quantitative approach based on time series data between 2002 and 2021. Data is analyzed using a structural model approach with SEM-SmartPLS software. As a result, changes in land cover have a significant effect on water discharge, but they have no effect on food productivity. Water discharge has a significant effect on food production, and changes in land cover greatly affect food productivity through the role of intermediary variables (mediation) of water discharge. In 2041, changes in land cover can reduce water discharge by around 47.9%. Then the water discharge is estimated to have an impact on the productivity of food crops by 62.3%, vegetable productivity by around 45.7%, and plantation crop productivity by around 72.7%.

Located in the basalt desert of northeastern Jordan, Early Bronze Age (EBA) Jawa is regarded as one of the major settlements in the Middle East during the 4th millennium BCE. In addition to a sophisticated water storage system, the existence of three complex agricultural terrace systems based on runoff and floodwater irrigation in the close vicinity was recently revealed.This paper investigates the impact of these water management strategies on harvest yields and the scale of the ‘on-site’ crop production at Jawa by applying a crop simulation model (CropSyst). Simulations for the cultivation of winter barley, winter wheat and lentils were performed for the period from 1983 to 2014. To simulate the different runoff irrigation schemes, a curve-number-based rainfall-runoff model was applied. To estimate the number of people that could have been supplied by the local food production, simple calculations based on metabolic calorie requirements and agricultural and pastoral production rates were conducted.This study shows that the runoff farming systems of EBA Jawa are relatively effective under current rainfall conditions. Even during dryer seasons, the simulated crop yields are much higher under runoff irrigation/floodwater irrigation than under non-irrigated conditions. On average the crop yields increase by 1.5 to 6 times, depending on crop type and runoff irrigation level. Moreover, a marked decrease in crop failures could be observed. The total crop and animal production could have satisfied the nutritional requirements of about 500 to 1000 persons per year. Considering the estimated maximum population for EBA Jawa, ranging from 3400 to 5000 people (Helms, 1981), local production did not meet the basic needs of all inhabitants. This indicates that trade might have been an important branch of Jawa's economy in order to supplement food resources. Moreover, former population estimates for ancient Jawa might be overstated.

This paper applies the system archetypes to investigate water, energy, food, and land nexus (WEFLN) in the Jatiluhur reservoir, the largest reservoir in Indonesia. The Jatiluhur reservoir has multiple functions such as hydropower supply and water supply for different end users. Multiple functions and multiple users mean there are tradeoffs in fulfilling the needs of different end users. Through feedback loops, the system dynamics tools concern on the interdependencies and the complexities of the nexus elements. It is found that growth engines such as industrial development and residential development support industrial and residential sectors. However, water availability will be a crucial issue as water supply can bound the growth engines. This situation is called the limits to growth archetype. Another system archetype named the success to successful is also identified. The success to successful archetype reminds us to distribute water and energy properly to sustain the growth in all sectors. Finally, outputs of this study can be a basis to develop a computer model and to support sustainable functions of the other reservoirs.