Water, energy, and food are essential for human well-being and for sustainable development. Water is required in almost all types of electricity generation and it is highly consumed in food production. Cities, industry, and crop production have increased their needs for water, energy and land resources, and at the same time, they are facing problems associated with the environmental degradation and, in some regions, resource scarcity. This paper proposes a multiobjective optimization model for the design of a water distribution network from a water–energy–food nexus point of view. Additionally, crop production and cost relationships are integrated to account for the water and energy requirements in the agricultural sector. The economic objective is the maximization of annual gross profit, which accounts for the water, energy and food production; the environmental objective establishes the minimization of overall greenhouse gas emissions, and the social objective is the maximization of the number of jobs. In this paper, because the objectives are opposites, a multistakeholder assessment is proposed in order to analyze and quantify the relationship of the water–energy–food nexus to assess synergies that improve the decision-making process. The mathematical model was applied to a case study located in the Sonoran Desert in Mexico, in which, a series of scenarios were solved to illustrate the capabilities of the proposed optimization approach. The results show strong trade-offs between the considered objectives as well as the quantification of the water–energy–food nexus.

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.

This article highlights the link between low-quality water and food crops irrigation. A cross-sectional research was conducted to assess factors motivating farmers to use low-quality water from the waste stabilisation ponds for food crops irrigation in urban and peri-urban areas in Morogoro Urban and Mvomero, in Morogoro Region, Tanzania, from October 2013 to March 2015. Data were collected through farmers’ survey (n = 80), in-depth interviews with key informants (n = 7) and focus group discussions (n = 4). Both descriptive and inferential statistics were used in results presentation. The findings indicated alternative way of earning income during dry seasons, lack of alternative sources of irrigation water, alternative source of employment, the need to produce food, land availability near the low-quality water, plant nutrients in the water and limited awareness of the health problems associated with low-quality water irrigation as incentives for farmers to irrigate food crops using low-quality water. The results further showed that farming using low-quality water has been their livelihood strategy; farmers meet their family needs such as school fees, health and food by using the income generated from the sale of vegetables and paddy. Regardless of all these benefits, the existing use of low-quality water in farming activities is informal. Besides, there are no regulations guiding its use with no declaration to whether the resource is suitable for food crops irrigation. However, banning the practice on the ground of health risks might be devastating to farmers. This practice should therefore be regulated in such a way that low-quality water disposed from the ponds is considered as a potential source of water for food crops irrigation.

The early months of the COVID-19 pandemic brought about significant disruptions in food supply chains, which increased consumers’ concern about possible food shortages and price gouging. To ensure personal food security, many consumers began stockpiling food and water in unusually large amounts.The goal of this study was to investigate individual- and household-level predictors of food and water stockpiling (FWS) in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic among Non-Latino Black and Latino adults.This study was a secondary analysis of cross-sectional survey data. Participants were 2,174 Non-Latino Black (66.4%) and Latino (33.6%) adults residing in a Midwestern state, who completed the survey in either May or June/July 2020.Participants were asked to self-report (yes or no) if they stockpiled food and/or water in the prior 7 days in response to the pandemic. A variety of variables was examined, including education level, annual income, employment status, concerns about COVID-19, and self-quarantine status. Crude and adjusted logistic regressions were used to identify variables associated with FWS.Non-Latino Black participants had lower odds of reporting FWS compared to Latinos (OR 0.64; 95% CI, 0.51-0.79). Similarly, participants who were not concerned about COVID-19 had lower odds of FWS compared with those extremely concerned (OR 0.37; 95% CI, 0.20 – 0.71). In contrast, odds of FWS were higher among participants who were self-quarantining all the time compared to those who were not (OR 2.16; 95% CI, 1.31 – 3.59).Results showed that Latinos, adults concerned about COVID-19, and self-quarantine status had significantly higher odds of FWS during the pandemic.

This paper presents the first groundwater‒energy‒food (GEF) nexus study of Iran’s agronomic crops based on national and provincial datasets and firsthand estimates of agricultural groundwater withdrawal. We use agronomic crop production, water withdrawal, and energy consumption data to estimate groundwater withdrawal from electric-powered irrigation wells and examine agronomic productivity in Iran’s 31 provinces through the lens of GEF nexus. The ex-post GEF analysis sheds light on some of the root causes of the nation’s worsening water shortage problems. Access to highly subsidized water (surface water and groundwater) and energy has been the backbone of agricultural expansion policies in Iran, supporting employment in agrarian communities. Consequently, water use for agronomic crop production has greatly overshot the renewable water supply capacity of the country, making water bankruptcy a serious national security threat. Significant groundwater table decline across the country and increasing energy consumption underscore dysfunctional feedback relations between agricultural water and energy price and groundwater withdrawal in an inefficient agronomic sector. Thus, it is essential to implement holistic policy reforms aimed at reducing agricultural water consumption to alleviate the looming water bankruptcy threats, which can lead to the loss of numerous agricultural jobs in the years to come.

Communication Team ICARDA. (29/6/2013). International Conference on Policies for Water and Food Security in Dry Areas: Highlights from Day 2, in "News and Views", pp.1-2 | Day 2 of the conference saw a series of policy interactions and debates that brought new perspectives on the conference themes of: water-food-employment policies and coping with water scarcity. These ï¬ndings will feed into the synthesis process on the ï¬nal day of the meeting

Recent advances in detailed multiregional input-output databases offers new opportunities to use these environmental accounting tools to explore the interrelationships between energy, water and food–the energy-water-food nexus. This paper takes the UK asa case study and calculates energy, water and food consumption-based accounts for 1997–2013. Policies, designed to reduce the environmental impact of consumption of products, can intervene at many stages in a product’s whole life-time from ‘cradle to gate’. We use input-output analysis techniques to investigate the interaction between the energy, water and food impacts of products at different points along their supply chains, from the extraction of material and burning of energy, to the point of final consumption. We identify the twenty most important final products whose large energy, water and food impacts could be captured by various demand-side strategies such as reducing food waste or dietary changes. We then use structural-path analysis to calculate the twenty most important supply chains whose impact could be captured by resource efficiency policies which act at the point of extraction and during the manufacturing process. Finally, we recognise that strategies that aim to reduce environmental impacts should not harm the socioeconomic well-being of the UK and her trade partners and suggest that pathways should be targeted where the employment and value added dependencies are relatively low.

Concerns about impacts of biomass growth for biofuel production emphasize the importance of planning energy crops expansion considering land, water, food and biodiversity. Brazil is the second largest ethanol producer worldwide and sugarcane is cultivated in many regions, including the Brazilian Cerrado (a Savannah-type biome). This paper analyses the impacts of first-generation sugarcane expansion in the Paranaíba basin (Goiás State), focusing on how future demand for ethanol could affect local resources availability. The study area is a sugarcane expansion frontier in Brazil, thus, the Cerrado biome should be focus of research considering competition for land and water uses. An economic-ecologic Input-Output (IO) framework was applied to develop a water-energy-food (WEF) nexus analysis. The Goiás’ IO table was expanded to assess water, energy and land uses, GHG emissions and employment levels through six different ethanol supply scenarios.Results show that if sugarcane expansion projected to 2030 considers the Goiás’ extended IO structure for the year 2008, it should cause little impact on land and water availability in the state, due to both the ample availability of suitable pasturelands for sugarcane expansion as well as water in most of the Paranaíba basin. The WEF nexus analysis is a valuable tool on guiding the sustainable management of natural resources considering water, energy, land use and GHG emissions as goals to the same policy. In particular, the hybrid extended IO-WEF nexus framework is useful to design effective biofuel policies, collectively addressing impacts on environmental, social and economic spheres, in a local or broader context.