Measures implemented to restore ecosystem services are widely believed to conflict with food production in the world's irrigated regions because of their competition for scarce water. However, little integrated analysis has been conducted to test this hypothesis. This work tests that hypothesis by presenting results of a basin-scale hydroeconomic analysis linking biophysical, hydrologic, agronomic, ecological, economic, policy, and institutional dimensions of the partially-restored Mesopotamian Marshes of Western Asia. Results serve to partly reject the hypothesis: Here we find that an economically-optimized ecosystem restoration trajectory can be achieved with a minimal loss in food production or farm income where restored wetlands complement important dimensions of food production. Moreover, we find that where water shortage sharing rules can be made more flexible, ecosystem restoration more nearly complements improved food security. Our results point to previously unexplored synergies among food production, ecosystem restoration, and water laws in arid and semi-arid regions internationally.

Jawahar Puja, 'Water quality and food safety: a review and discussion of risks', Water Policy 11, IFPRI, 2009 | IFPRI3; ISI

Peter G. McCornick, Seleshi B. Awulachew, Michael Abebe, 'Water?food?energy?environment synergies and tradeoffs: major issues and case studies', Water Policy, vol. 10(S1), pp.23-36, IWA Publishing, 2008

CGIAR Research Program on Policies, Institutions, and Markets (PIM) | Yang Y. C. Ethan et al., 'Modeling the Agricultural Water–Energy–Food Nexus in the Indus River Basin, Pakistan', Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management 142, IFPRI, 2016

Christian Stein, Claudia Pahl-Wostl, Jennie Barron, 'Towards a relational understanding of the water-energy-food nexus: an analysis of embeddedness and governance in the Upper Blue Nile region of Ethiopia', Environmental Science & Policy, vol. 90, pp.173-182, Elsevier BV, 2018 | Given the need for transformative changes towards more sustainable, integrated management of water, energy and food systems, the water-energy-food nexus concept seems highly relevant. However, while intuitively compelling, the nexus has also been criticized for abstracting and thereby dis-embedding the collaboration processes through which further integration could be achieved. There is a lack of empirical analysis and contextsensitive understanding, of the opportunities and constraints of, collaboration and cross-sector coordination, as faced by actors governing interconnected water, energy and food systems. In this paper we analyse how actors involved in the governance of water, energy and food systems are embedded in social networks, and discuss how that embeddedness shapes collaboration and coordination processes that are relevant for addressing interconnected sustainability challenges. Drawing on the notion of problemsheds, we delineate an analytical space that captures the interactions between water, energy and food systems and the actors influencing them in the Upper Blue Nile of Ethiopia. Our empirical data suggest that the claim that actors from different sectors are disconnected from each other is overly simplistic. The ways in which actors are embedded in hierarchical structures may help to explain why coordination challenges persist, despite the presence of cross-sectoral linkages among them