CGIAR Research Program on Water, Land and Ecosystems (WLE) | Mehta Lyla et al., 'Water for Food Security, Nutrition and Social Justice', , IFPRI, 2019

1. Introduction 2. Linking Water and Food Security and Nutrition (FSN) 3. Agricultural Water Management 4. Water Governance for FSN 5. Water, FSN and Social Justice Index | Non-PR | IFPRI5; CRP5; 1 Fostering Climate-Resilient and Sustainable Food Supply; G Cross-cutting gender theme | EPTD | CGIAR Research Program on Water, Land and Ecosystems (WLE)

In many slums and informal settlements in the global South, the quality of water accessed by poor people is so bad that it adversely affects health and nutrition, especially of children and babies. Moreover, many of these settlements lack adequate sanitation, which contributes to disease, such as diarrhoea, which further contributes to poor nutritional outcomes. Safe drinking water and sanitation are fundamental to the nutrition, health and dignity of all. Despite the progress made in achieving global targets around water and sanitation, about 3 in 10 people, or 2.1 billion lack access to safe, readily available water at home, and 6 in 10, or 4.5 billion, lack safely managed sanitation. Growing water scarcity and variability will increase the competition for water resources across sectors, with water often being taken away from the agricultural sector to drive greater economic value per unit of water in other sectors. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.

Food, energy, and water (FEW) are basic needs for well-being and quality of life. Assessing FEW security allows residents, communities, and policy makers to make informed decisions about how to sustain and improve well-being. We have developed a FEW security assessment framework that examines four components of security: availability, access, quality, and preference. With the help of local community members, we interviewed 114 households in three rural Alaska communities to assess FEW security, drivers and outcomes of FEW security, and potential interactions among FEW components and with renewable energy (RE) developments. While FEW security was high overall, preference and quality, especially for food, was lower. Food harvested from the local environment (i.e. subsistence) was necessary to include in security assessments given that 24% of participants reported insecurity when asked about contemporary sources (i.e. purchased) versus 5% reporting insecurity for subsistence food sources (i.e., harvested). The major influences on FEW security tended to originate from outside the community, including factors such as transportation, income, fuel prices, and weather. One internal factor, health, was both a driver and an outcome of FEW security. Satisfaction with RE varied (42%–68%) with dissatisfaction due to unreliability, uncertainty of the economic benefit, desire for other types of RE, or wanting more RE (n = 6). Communication about RE projects was key to managing expectations, promoting knowledge, and identifying benefits for residents. Participants did not identify linkages between RE and FEW security. Our assessment tool can be used by communities and policy makers to contextualize FEW security into more insightful and specific components, allowing for identification of attainable actions to improve FEW security and thus individual and community well-being.

Most disenfranchised populations live and work in rural areas under poverty and with limited access to basic resources as energy, water and food supply. Individuals and families in rural areas face difficult odds that often result in inequality and disenfranchisement. They are more likely than their urban counterparts to suffer from the consequences of poverty, facing huge problems associated with undernourishment that mostly end in human casualties. The Human Development Index (HDI) helps to identify healthy life criteria and a decent standard of living that is closely related to quality of life. Several strategies have been reported to improve the living conditions in disenfranchised communities around the world. However, there is not an integrated approach to reducing poverty and ensuring sustainable use of the environment and natural resources in these communities, accounting for the water–energy–food nexus to improve the HDI. Therefore, this paper presents a new optimization approach accounting for the water–energy–food nexus in order to increase the HDI in disenfranchised communities by simultaneously considering economic, environmental and social sustainability criteria. A case study taking into account fourteen of the municipalities of the State of Michoacán from Mexico with the lowest HDI was considered to apply the proposed approach. The results show that by the implementation of this integrated approach, it is possible to increase the HDI in such communities by 4.3%, which is higher that results show by Mexico’s HDI values in last 17 years of 0.93%, making the model attractive for decisions makers.