Water, energy and food nexus of Indus Water Treaty (IWT) is presented in the light of water governance. The water governance doctrine refers to social, economic, administrative and political systems influencing the transboundary water use and management. Water governance means who gets what water, when and how much, and who has the right to water related benefits. Indus Water Treaty is cited to be one of the few successful settlements of boundary water basin conflicts that has stood the test of times since last six decades. Riparian states have opportunities of harvesting water, power and agriculture by compliance to accords in letter and spirit. IWT restrains both (India) and lower (Pakistan) riparian from pulling out of accord from fear of deadly consequences. IWT is founded on World Bank’s professionally prepared comprehensive terms and conditions keeping in mind future regional developments. This treaty has given control of three eastern rivers (Ravi, Beas and Sutlej) to India and three western rivers (Indus, Jhelum and Chenab) to Pakistan. IWT gives both countries genuine share of eastern/western waters for domestic use, agriculture and electricity generation using Run-of-River Plants, subject to observing minimum level of water flow into lower riparian at Head Marala Barrage. Water, energy and food nexus of this treaty bonds upper and lower riparian to comply with water governance principles. Upper riparian diverted 34 million acre feet (MAF) water out of eastern rivers before entering into Pakistan and launched run-of-river power plants spree on western rivers in last two decades. Restricting water flow to lower riparian in the name of pond filling needs attention. Unrestricted use of water in run-of-river power plants is pointed out to be a limiting factor in Indus Water Treaty. Continuum of cooperation has room for collaboration under Indus Water Treaty. India and Pakistan can sort out disputes by dialogue, in light of rights and needs, rather Harmon Doctrine.

International water law, which regulates the uses of international watercourses that are situated partly in different States, is a highly topical sector of law. In 2014, two conventions covering the subject matter entered into force globally. At the same time, a water-food-energy nexus has become part and parcel of the development canon that emphasises the importance of the complex relationship between water, energy and food. In this article, it is discussed whether international water law supports the water-food-energy nexus approach, which aims to reconcile the different water uses in international basins. The analysis also covers the human rights to water and food from the nexus viewpoint. The legal regime of the Mekong River is used as an example of the possibilities and challenges of the nexus approach in international water law. It is concluded that despite its deficiencies international water law provides a very useful platform for the cooperation between States and different sectors that aim at guaranteeing water, food and energy security.

Population growth, increasing demands for food, ever-growing competition for water, reduced supply reliability, climate change and climate uncertainty and droughts, decline in critical ecosystems services, competition for land use, changing regulatory environments, and less participatory water resources governance are contributing to increasing difficulties and challenges in water resource management for agriculture and food. The need for sustainable food security for our global population and the need for preserving the environment, namely natural and man-made ecosystems and landscapes, have created an increased need for integrated, participative and scalable solutions focusing the various levels of irrigation and nature water management, from the field crop to the catchment and basin scales. Meanwhile, challenges and issues relative to water management for agriculture and food have evolved enormously in the last 30 years and the role of active management of the components of the water cycle is assuming an increased importance since their dynamics are key to assure water use sustainability, mainly agriculture and natural ecosystems sustainability. However, different regions face context-specific challenges associated with water scarcity, climate, governance, and population requirements. The main and first challenge is producing enough food for a growing population, which is intimately related with challenges placed to agricultural water management, mainly irrigation management. This paper revises challenges and progress achieved in the last 30 years focusing on irrigated agriculture, mainly water management, and its contribution to food security and the welfare of rural communities.

In the developing world’s irrigated areas, water management and planning is often motivated by the need for lasting food security. Two important policy measures to address this need are improving the flexibility of water appropriation rules and developing irrigation storage infrastructure. Little research to date has investigated the performance of these two policy measures in a single analysis while maintaining a basin wide water balance. This paper examines impacts of storage capacity and water appropriation rules on total economic welfare in irrigated agriculture, while maintaining a water balance. The application is to a river basin in northern Afghanistan. A constrained optimization framework is developed to examine economic consequences on food security and farm income resulting from each policy measure. Results show that significant improvements in both policy aims can be achieved through expanding existing storage capacity to capture up to 150 percent of long-term average annual water supplies when added capacity is combined with either a proportional sharing of water shortages or unrestricted water trading. An important contribution of the paper is to show how the benefits of storage and a changed water appropriation system operate under a variable climate. Results show that the hardship of droughts can be substantially lessened, with the largest rewards taking place in the most difficult periods. Findings provide a comprehensive framework for addressing future water scarcity, rural livelihoods, and food security in the developing world’s irrigated regions.

Global population growth exerts stresses on river basins that provide food, water, energy and other ecosystem services. In some basins, evidence is emerging of failures to satisfy these demands. This paper assembles data from nine river basins in a framework that relates water and food systems to development. The framework provides a consistent basis for analysis of the water and food problem globally, while providing insight into specific conditions within basins. The authors find that successes occur when demand is met by increased productivity, while failure occurs when factors conspire to prevent development of land and water resources.

The water–food–energy Nexus has emerged as a new perspective in debates concerned with balancing potentially conflicting sectoral imperatives of large scale development investments concerned with energy, water or food security. Current frameworks are partial as they largely represent a water-centric perspective. Our hypothesis is that a dynamic Nexus framework that attempts to equally weight sectoral objectives provides a new paradigm for diagnosis and investigation. Dynamic refers here to explicitly understanding (or a diagnosis of) the dynamic relationships and ripple effects whereas static-comparative refers to a comparison of states before and after change. This paper proposes a balanced Nexus framework and presents results from an application to the Mekong basin. The analysis identified the advantages of a sectorally balanced, dynamic Nexus approach, in particular the ability to reveal either the emergence of cross-sectoral connections, or changes in those connections, as a consequence of single sector interventions.

This article summarizes some major factors that influence the Water–Energy–Food (W–E–F) Security Nexus and how they are perceived in different basins. These findings are based on a survey that was undertaken for the Global Catchment Initiative (GCI) within the Global Water System Project (GWSP) complemented by case studies for a transboundary basin (the Lake Winnipeg Basin), a national basin (Yellow Basin in China), and a number of the basins in a nation (India). The analysis also includes ranking of river basin issues related to the WEF Nexus based on the views of experts in nine basins. Based on this analysis, factors that have affected the evolution of the W–E–F Nexus, including the applications of Earth observations, are discussed. The study concludes that the W–E–F Nexus could be an effective vehicle for advancing water and sustainability issues and recommends research and demonstration projects to test the extent to which the WEF framework could be helpful in increasing understanding and collaborative governance approaches.

Water resources face an unparalleled confluence of pressures, with agriculture and urban growth as the most relevant human-related stressors. In this context, methodologies using a Nexus framework seem to be suitable to address these challenges. However, the urban sector has been commonly ignored in the Nexus literature. We propose a Nexus framework approach, considering the economic dimensions of the interdependencies and interconnections among agriculture (food production) and the urban sector as water users within a common basin. Then, we assess the responses of both sectors to climatic and demographic stressors. In this setting, the urban sector is represented through an economic water demand at the household level, from which economic welfare is derived. Our results show that the Nexus components here considered (food, water, and welfare) will be negatively affected under the simulated scenarios. However, when these components are decomposed to their particular elements, we found that the less water-intensive sector—the urban sector—will be better off since food production will leave significant amounts of water available. Moreover, when addressing uncertainty related to climate-induced shocks, we could identify the basin resilience threshold. Our approach shows the compatibilities and divergences between food production and the urban sector under the Nexus framework.

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.

Ensuring water, energy, and food security with minimum damage to groundwater resources is a key challenge to achieve sustainable development in arid areas. To address this scientific and policy challenge, a Multi-Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM)-nonlinear programming approach is developed for informing debates over improved management of the groundwater, energy, and food nexus that optimally allocates resources to food production to improve economic benefit and control groundwater depletion. Furthermore, this approach is capable of evaluating management policies affecting resource planning at a regional level. The approach is applied to the Neishaboor basin in northeast Iran. The main results are: (i) economic profit and food production depend on groundwater availability and energy use, which raise environmental protection challenges; (ii) the solutions could be used to define optimal policy strategies for sustainable management of groundwater, energy, food, and simultaneously achieve economic and environmental goals; (iii) improved irrigation efficiency would be considered as an efficient strategy under conditions of growing water scarcity. The results of this research can inform policy makers on effective strategies for integrated groundwater, energy, and food planning.