Assessing circularity of multi-sectoral systems under the Water-Energy-Food-Ecosystems (WEFE) nexus

Data availability: Data will be made available on request.

Supplementary materials are available online at https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0043135422007916?via%3Dihub#sec0017 .

Copyright © 2022 The Author(s). The Multi-Sectoral Water Circularity Assessment (MSWCA) is a methodological framework developed for circularity assessment of the Water-Energy-Food-Ecosystems nexus. It involves five methodological steps and includes an indicators list for the selection of case-specific indicators. This study expands the MSWCA to provide a systematic approach for selecting indicators, considering system's circular actions and multi-functionality, the capture of implemented changes, the three CE principles and the sustainable development goals. Furthermore, this study differentiates between benchmark and dynamic circularity assessment and applies the expanded MSWCA in a water system of the HYDROUSA H2020 project. The benchmark assessment indicates that the HYDROUSA system achieves a 75% increase of water circularity, 76–80% increase of nutrients circularity and 14% reduction of operational `carbon footprint compared to the baseline scenario. The dynamic assessment highlights that additional measures can improve the system's circularity performance (e.g. water circularity can reach 94%) and mitigate risks occurring from uncontrollable changes.

This research was supported by the Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Program HYDROUSA (Grant Agreement No 776643).