Navigating ecosystem service assessment tool selection for food-energy-water nexus: An interdisciplinary versus intradisciplinary perspective
2025
The interconnected nature of the food-energy-water (FEW) nexus underscores its significant impact on ecosystem services. Despite its importance, limited progress has been made in incorporating ecosystem service assessment tools into FEW nexus analysis and decision-making. This study examines how ecosystem service assessment tools incorporate interdisciplinarity and intradisciplinarity in the context of the FEW nexus, with the aim of informing future tool development and enhancing nexus governance. An integrated evaluation framework, based on interdisciplinary and intradisciplinary indicators, was developed. The framework was applied through expert elicitation to assess six ecosystem service assessment tools relevant to the FEW nexus. This study finds that, while ecosystem service assessment tools exhibit considerable variation in intradisciplinary performance, their interdisciplinary scores are consistently low and narrowly distributed. The study also finds that, while ecosystem service tools are widely applied across FEW systems, none provides a fully integrated nexus framework. Their strengths lie in connectivity and innovation within the assessment domain, whereas weak performance in empowerment under the accessibility domain. As a key contribution, this study introduces a decision tree to guide tool selection, based on FEW nexus needs. This study suggests that existing tools primarily support only basic integration of FEW systems and highlights the need for more comprehensive evaluation indicators.
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