Water resources are already very scarce. With further demand from population growth, dietary changes, biofuel production, urbanisation and climate change, it will be extremely difficult to find enough supply to enable an increase in global food production by 70 per cent. There are, however, potential solutions that involve increasing water productivity, improved water storage, more irrigation and re-using waste water. But current investment levels in overseas development aid and spending at country level are unlikely to be sufficient to ensure food security in the relatively short- term, let alone by 2050, when the global population is forecast to be nine billion. This article describes some of the issues that have to be faced to deliver food security and overcome water scarcity, and how these improvements can be achieved through a combination of science, policy and investment.

Water, energy, food, and environment are highly interconnected, with intricate dependencies and multiple uncertainties involved in agricultural system. This paper presents a novel water-energy-food-environment nexus (WEFEN) optimization model for sustainable development of agriculture. The developed model incorporates stochastic multi-objective programming, triangular fuzzy numbers, fuzzy credibility-constrained programming, mixed-integer programming, non-linear programming, and Stewart model into a general optimization framework. The model is capable of (1) balancing the tradeoffs among socio-economic, resources, and environmental concerns; (2) generating valid WEFEN management solutions achieving the targets of maximum net economic benefit, maximum renewable energy production, minimum water footprint, and minimum carbon footprint simultaneously; (3) dealing with complexities and uncertainties existed in agricultural WEFEN systems. The model was applied to the Zhanghe irrigation district to give policy-makers insights into what efforts should be made towards sustainable agricultural management. Flexible alternatives were generated under different scenarios and sensitivity analyses were conducted. Results highlighted the significance of improvement of internal water storage capacity, reasonable farmland management, and compromise decision preferences. The proposed methodology is applicable for other agriculture-centered regions suffering from multifold resources and environment crisis.

This article examines impacts of infrastructure development and climate variability on economic outcomes for the Amu Darya Basin in Central Asia. It aims to identify the most economically productive mix of expanded reservoir storage for economic benefit sharing to occur, in which economic welfare of all riparians is improved. Policies examined include four combinations of storage infrastructure for each of two climate futures. An empirical optimization model is developed and applied to identify opportunities for improving the welfare of Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, and Turkmenistan. The analysis 1) characterizes politically constrained and economically optimized water-use patterns for these combinations of expanded reservoir storage capacity, 2) describes Pareto-Improving packages of expanded storage capacity that could raise economic welfare for all four riparians, and accounts for impacts for each of two climate scenarios. Results indicate that a combination of targeted water storage infrastructure and efficient water allocation could produce outcomes for which the discounted net present value of benefits are favorable for each riparian. Results identify a framework to provide economic motivation for all riparians to cooperate through development of water storage infrastructure. Our findings illustrate the principle that development of water infrastructure can expand the negotiation space by which all communities can gain economic benefits in the face of limited water supply. Still, despite our optimistic findings, patient and deliberate negotiation will be required to transform potential improvements into actual gains.

Many regions in Africa and the Middle East are vulnerable to drought and to water and food insecurity, motivating agency efforts such as the U.S. Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) to provide early warning of drought events in the region. Each year these warnings guide life-saving assistance that reaches millions of people. A new NASA multimodel, remote sensing–based hydrological forecasting and analysis system, NHyFAS, has been developed to support such efforts by improving the FEWS NET’s current early warning capabilities. NHyFAS derives its skill from two sources: (i) accurate initial conditions, as produced by an offline land modeling system through the application and/or assimilation of various satellite data (precipitation, soil moisture, and terrestrial water storage), and (ii) meteorological forcing data during the forecast period as produced by a state-of-the-art ocean–land–atmosphere forecast system. The land modeling framework used is the Land Information System (LIS), which employs a suite of land surface models, allowing multimodel ensembles and multiple data assimilation strategies to better estimate land surface conditions. An evaluation of NHyFAS shows that its 1–5-month hindcasts successfully capture known historic drought events, and it has improved skill over benchmark-type hindcasts. The system also benefits from strong collaboration with end-user partners in Africa and the Middle East, who provide insights on strategies to formulate and communicate early warning indicators to water and food security communities. The additional lead time provided by this system will increase the speed, accuracy, and efficacy of humanitarian disaster relief, helping to save lives and livelihoods.

The program NEXUS Gains addresses key challenges of transforming water, energy, food and ecosystem (WEFE) systems in transboundary bread-basket basins in East and Southern Africa (Blue Nile and Limpopo basins), Central (Aral Sea basin) and South Asia (Ganges and Indus basin) in a changing world. The program particularly explores water resource management options to understand WEFE system interdependencies, trade-offs and synergies and develop more sustainable development pathways for all members society. The presentation will discuss alternative interventions to increase water productivity different sectors (irrigation, forestry, industries) across scales ranging from farm to watershed to river basin scales. Therefore, particular attention will be given to integrated water storage management in human built and natural infrastructure in South Asia and East Africa. The implications for hydrological process and water resources dynamics and wider environmental, social and economic systems are analyzed and related policy implications are discussed considering also climate change. | Non-PR | IFPRI5; 1 Fostering Climate-Resilient and Sustainable Food Supply | EPTD

The program NEXUS Gains addresses key challenges of transforming water, energy, food and ecosystem (WEFE) systems in transboundary bread-basket basins in East and Southern Africa (Blue Nile and Limpopo basins), Central (Aral Sea basin) and South Asia (Ganges and Indus basin) in a changing world. The program particularly explores water resource management options to understand WEFE system interdependencies, trade-offs and synergies and develop more sustainable development pathways for all members society. The presentation will discuss alternative interventions to increase water productivity different sectors (irrigation, forestry, industries) across scales ranging from farm to watershed to river basin scales. Therefore, particular attention will be given to integrated water storage management in human built and natural infrastructure in South Asia and East Africa. The implications for hydrological process and water resources dynamics and wider environmental, social and economic systems are analyzed and related policy implications are discussed considering also climate change.

Food, energy, and water (FEW) are interconnected pillars that underpin the security of people’s livelihoods. In this paper, we propose a decision-support model to better understand and aid management of regional FEW nexus systems under uncertainty. We apply the model to a case study focusing on fluctuations in water supply, which significantly affect production in the agriculture and energy sectors in Shanxi Province, China. We use a two-stage, stochastic, chance-constrained programming approach to the proposed spatially detailed cost-minimizing FEW nexus model under demand and natural resource (land and water) constraints. This approach translates the target reliability level (i.e., the probability that the devised solution can satisfy all constraints) into a penalty that has to be paid in the case of their non-fulfillment. On this basis, robust decisions (i.e., production options suitable for a broad variation in certainty of water supply) are derived. Using this approach, we estimate the penalties required to achieve given levels of reliability by incentivizing the deployment of water-saving technologies. For example, our model predicts that water storage would become cost-effective if the penalty for exceeding the available water supply were 2.5 times higher than the current price for industrial water; this would enable at least 40% reliability compared to 18% if the penalty were at the current water price level. Taking advantage of the differences in water intensity of crops in different sites, our model optimizes the reservoir location, which allows water withdrawal by agriculture to be reduced by 1.23%. We also evaluate the benefits of incorporating uncertainty and missed opportunity due to a lack of perfect information. In the case study, we show that the benefits of including uncertainty in the form of the two-stage stochastic programming approach appear to be quite significant, reaching 4% of the total solution costs. Water-importing costs, taxes, and subsidies are instruments that translate into the penalty in this model; the modeling approach presented here can thus be used to inform cost-effective and robust management of the FEW nexus in Shanxi Province, China, and other water-scarce regions around the world.