Optimal allocation of the food, energy and water (FEW) resources is of emergent concern owing to depleting supply of the natural resources. Increasing demand for the FEW resources is attributable to growing population, migration, economic development, technological advancements and climate change. The FEW nexus (FEW-N) is an intricate system that requires robust quantitative decision-making tools to investigate the links between the various system components and sustainability. This study proposes a meta-model-based FEW-N system for addressing the issue of natural resource allocation for food and energy security. It incorporated an integrated model consisting of the Techno-Economic and Input/Output models in an Optimisation framework with maximum economic benefit as its objective function. The COINOR Branch and Cut (CBC) and CPLEX solvers in the Advanced Interactive Multidimensional Modelling System (AIMMs) were used to formulate and solve the optimisation problems. To validate the developed framework, the scenario analysis was performed on three cases in South Africa. First, it was found that using FEW resources for food production in dryland open fields, undercover greenhouses, and irrigated open fields was more profitable than for production of electrical energy from bioenergy, solar/wind-based hybrid renewable energy, and hydropower production systems. Second, the revenue of the sub-sector determined the percentage use of the FEW resources and the percentage contribution of technology options to food and energy security. Third, open fields, greenhouses, and irrigated open fields contributed significantly to food security. The holistic framework developed provided enhanced understanding of the FEW-N system. Resource security has significantly improved due to the ability of various technologies in each subsector to meet the food and energy demands of the specific population. Besides providing scientific support for national decisions regarding food, energy, and water policy, the proposed framework will also contribute to sustainable development at the subnational level.

PR | IFPRI4; CRP5 | EPTD | CGIAR Research Program on Water, Land and Ecosystems (WLE)

IFPRI4 | PR | Book chapter | EPTD

Water competition is a key issue in the study of the water-food-energy nexus (WFEN), which can affect water, food, and energy security and can generate notable challenges in water resource management. Since Bayesian network can express parameter uncertainty with a certain probability distribution while reflecting the dependencies of each variable, this study used a Bayesian network to model the WFEN in the Pearl River Region (PRR). The network structure can intuitively represent complex causal relationships, and the form of the probability distribution can effectively reflect the variable uncertainty. The responses of the Bayesian network model under different scenarios were used to analyse the major influencing factors, and water competition relationships in various sectors were explored. The results indicated that water competition between the different sectors was very complex and could dynamically change under the different scenarios. For example, an increase in hydropower and flow to sea could lead to a decrease in irrigation water, but an increase in irrigation water did not necessarily reduce hydropower and flow to sea. Water for hydropower generation and salt tide alleviation were obviously affected by the total offstream water use, but there existed no obvious water competition between these aspects in general. However, when offstream water use remained stable, a competitive relationship was observed between hydropower and flow to sea. Overall, the outcomes of this study could be of great significance to further analyse the WFEN in other regions.