The 2017 Texas Water Development Board's State Water Plan predicts a 41% gap between water demand and existing supply by 2070. This reflects an overall projection, but the challenge will affect various regions of the state differently. Texas has 16 regional water planning zones characterized by distinct populations, water demands, and existing water supplies. Each is expected to face variations of pressures, such as increased agricultural and energy development (particularly hydraulic fracturing) and urban growth that do not necessarily follow the region's water plan. Great variability in resource distribution and competing resource demands across Texas will result in the emergence of distinct hotspots, each with unique characteristics that require multiple, localized, interventions to bridge the statewide water gap. This study explores three such hotspots: 1) water-food competition in Lubbock and the potential of producing 3 billion gallons of treated municipal waste water and encouraging dryland agriculture; 2) implementing Low Impact Developments (LIDs) for agriculture in the City of San Antonio, potentially adding 47 billion gallons of water supply, but carrying a potentially high financial cost; and 3) water-energy interrelations in the Eagle Ford Shale in light of well counts, climate dynamics, and population growth. The growing water gap is a state wide problem that requires holistic assessments that capture the impact on the tightly interconnected water, energy, and food systems. Better understanding the trade-offs associated with each 'solution’ and enabling informed dialogue between stakeholders, offers a basis for formulating localized policy recommendations specific to each hotspot. © 2018 Elsevier B.V.

North Africa is one of the driest regions in the world. Consequently, all countries in the region depend mainly on agricultural imports to achieve the food security. The present study endeavor to estimate: firstly, the national and the global water saving achieved through the North African international cereal trade by using the concept of virtual water trade. Secondly, the relation between the imports of cereal trade, as endogenous variable, and the available water resources availability with other important factors as exogenous variables. The results showed that, at the national level, all North African countries achieved water saves to the extent that exceed the endowment total fresh water resources in Libya, Algeria, and Tunisia. Importing of maize and wheat is the most important player of the saving national water imports of among the cereal crops. All countries in the North Africa region achieved water saving except Egypt. The model results has shown statistically significant coefficients of factors affecting the total imports of cereal crops such as, per-capita fresh water resources, the area of irrigated water, the area of Arable land . the negative sing of per-capita fresh water resources indicates that the importing cereals using intensive water is not optional decision but due to the shortage of the available of water resources . Negative signs of irrigated area and of arable land are consistent indicating that the increasing of the irrigated area and the arable land will intuitively reduce the importing of cereals.

Existing strategies for management of water scarcity in the Middle East and North Africa negotiate a complex system of trade-offs between water, energy, and food production. The effects of rural households' green water management practices on basin-level water, energy, food and carbon stocks and flows are sketched qualitatively in six basin agro-ecosystems. The case for increased strategic support for green agricultural water management practices appears stronger when weighed from the nexus perspective, rather than purely from the point of view of water balance and food production. Trade-offs under critical transitions affecting agricultural water use are explored, and the scope for quantitative monitoring is discussed. © 2015, © 2015 Taylor & Francis.