Introduction:
We live in the Anthropocene, where humans have become a significant force influencing the climate. Rising incomes and reduced poverty correlated with the increasing demand for goods and services, such as food and energy, which, in turn, increase demand of natural resources and habitats, adding to over-exploitation and degradation. Climate change contributes to this predicament, as a variety of climate adaptation and mitigation steps, such as irrigation, desalination or biofuels, are often resource-intensive.[1]
In a recent attempt to measure the limits of global resources, the Planetary Boundaries Paradigm has established a crucial environmental threshold above which rapid and unpredictable structural or “regime” changes can be triggered. This system aims to define global limits for water, land and energy use (the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as a proxy) and other natural resources, such as minerals or biodiversity.
Present demand and resource usage trajectories seek to undermine the inclusiveness and sustainability of growth. For example, by 2050, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is planning a 70% increase in food production and the World Energy Council (WEC) is planning a 100% increase in energy supply. These trajectories must be constrained by the more productive use of resources and decreased waste.
Priority must be given to addressing current water, resources, and food insecurity, particularly among the poorest in the world, providing a balanced diet, clean water, and access to modern energy for everyone, moving beyond the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). However, this aim should not only be followed at the household level, but also at the level of industrial growth to allow economic development for all countries. Responding to these additional demands in closing these gaps raises far greater resource challenges.[2]
It is likely that the Rio+20 Conference will initiate a mechanism to determine the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that would resolve both these social and environmental challenges: remaining within the “ceiling” or planetary limits of the environment, and the socio-economic “floor” that together determines a secure and more equitable operating room for humanity. When designing these SDGs, it will be necessary to consider interactions and feedback between planetary boundaries and between SDGs, as well as between planetary boundaries and SDGs.
For example, efforts to achieve food security need to be smart in terms of water, land and energy, which is not necessarily the case for agricultural intensification; efforts to achieve energy and climate conservation objectives need to be smart in terms of water and land, which is also not the case for renewable or non-conventional energy; and efforts to achieve water objectives need to be smart in terms of energy and climate, which is not a case for desalination.
This nexus angle is especially important given the strong links between sectors, i.e. agriculture, water, electricity, the climate, which are likely to become even stronger so as to make externalities across resources co-constraint on sustainable growth. For example, in Jordan, 25% of all electricity is used for the supply of water, mainly for the pumping of water. In the United States, electricity production accounts for about 40% of all water withdrawals. Large-scale water transfers in China aimed at alleviating water scarcity are energy-intensive, partly relying on hydropower which, due to evaporative losses from reservoirs, contributes to water scarcity.[3]
Systemic thought and integrated solutions-a nexus approach-need to direct the creation and implementation of SDGs. In fact, the real novelty of the SDGs can be precisely that – their conjunctive growth – given that most of the individual objectives have already been formulated in one way or another in the past. The Nexus approach also needs to educate emerging national green economy roadmaps so that the resulting productivity improvements can help to sustain the combined impact of all national development agendas within the safe operating space of the earth.
Understanding the Nexus: How to Take a Nexus Approach
The value of cross-sectoral relations for increasing the overall efficiency of resource use is at all levels, from local to national and even global. The scientific community is beginning to further refine and map planetary boundaries, and is also looking at how they are interlinked. Recent work that addresses bilateral links includes the global mapping of[4]:
- Water supply and productivity constraints in food production, by LPJmL/WaterSim, which shows that water productivity, expressed in kilocalories per cubic metre of water intake, varies by country of magnitude depending on crop mix, agricultural management and climate change;
- Combination of water and land constraints in food and bio-energy development by FAO’s State of the World Land and Water Resources for Food and Agriculture project, which shows that the most significant co-constraints exist in parts of China and India; and
- Water constraints in power generation by the World Resources Institute (WRI), which demonstrates, for example, that 17 per cent of the global power plant design capacity is located in areas of high water stress.
By continuously incorporating these current evaluations, we will develop global scenarios for a new nexus strategy that will complement and advance the work of previous perspectives, such as the United Nations Climate Programme, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, the FAO and the World Energy Outlook.[5] This will help us to map current and potential hot spots of available resources and efficiency of resources across sectors. From these “nexus maps” we can recognise the ability to minimise the overall usage of resources by enhancing the configuration of production patterns and the procurement of inputs, including opportunities associated with trade and foreign direct investment. For example, electricity trading schemes can support the generation of hydropower in low-water and/or high-availability locations, as in the Nile Basin Initiative, and foreign direct investment can provide information and technology for co-production of biofuel and food/feed for improved water and land productivity.
Such a model-based, top-down approach to the nexus needs to be built alongside a bottom-up approach in order to create a knowledge base on best practises, policies and solutions. Since these nexus solutions need to be guided by individual institutions, additional incentives and frameworks need to be placed in place to bridge institutional and sectoral silos. This will minimise the negative externalities of short-term sectoral optimisation and instead create long-term structural resilience, reduce overall resource demand and decouple resource use growth. Only then will we face the demands of “great acceleration” and create a sustainable transformation for the vulnerable.
Nexus Solutions
Although the nexus concepts outlined above are universal, solutions have to be context-specific, and to match the political context, SDGs ought to be interpreted. Developing, transitional and developing countries each need different approaches to the nexus, particularly addressing broad gaps in consumption habits and resource use intensity between and within countries, leading to the new solution.
The most important priority for low-income countries is to close at the same time the large gaps in water, energy and food security that is linked to low resource productivity, in particular the gaps in agriculture. These differences almost always increase due to the degradation of natural resources, combined with rapid urbanization and bad governance. Therefore, for sustainable intensification, integrated knowledge and technologies are key. Greenery development and urbanization will tend to focus heavily on agriculture. For instance, a nexus approach to water, land, ecosystems and energy in Kenya’s Naivasha basin has led to numerous solutions, which include payments for ecosystem services that provide economic incentives for improved resource management.[6]
With their increasingly rising economies, a 10-to-15-year increase of gross domestic product (GDP) and quickly expanding population and per capita demands, emerging powers must embark on more resource-efficient development paths. The trend towards increasingly overcoming their limited resources in China[7], India, the Middle East and North African countries through better-endowed regions, in particular South America and sub-Saharan Africa, must not slow down local nexus solutions within those countries. For example, in Gujarat, India, which is severely constrained in per capita availability of water and land, the so-called Jyotirgam scheme for improved energy access for households and irrigation (water pumping) has significantly reduced groundwater over-exploitation. Through an integrated approach, this scheme has increased energy and food security and has raised Gujarat’s GDP growth above that of the rest of India.[8]
With their high per-capita resource demands and large external resource footprints (also externalizing resource degradation), industrialized countries will have to reduce consumption and waste levels. They will also need to integrate linkages into economic and development cooperation, share innovative technologies, on modern renewable energy, for example, and linking nexus-conscious institutions with other nations. For example, the Carbon Credits Act of Australia, which offers incentives for forestation to sequester carbon, and its National Water Initiative, which restricts water-intensive forestation, could be integrated according to water availability through landscape zoning.
When implementing nexus principles, the private and public sectors and civil society have distinct but complementary responsibilities (ERD 2012). The public sector coordinates, establishes the framework for regulatory and incentive measures, and gets to spend public funds. Policy policies on agriculture, the environment, land use, energy and climate need to be more cohesive across institutions and sectors, while retaining strong sectoral capability. The private sector, meanwhile, should accelerate innovation towards a more effective use of resources and a sustainable increase in the availability of resources. [9]
For example, if wind energy could be used to desalinate seawater or brackish water, some drylands could become highly efficient and/or become carbon sinks in the production of irrigated food. Supply chain partners, which are primarily the responsibility of the private sector, ought to be regulated as ‘supply networks’ from output to consumption, in which cross-resource optimization takes place. Such a supply-net approach, which encourages the generation of even more detailed nexus information and also the effective pricing of inputs, could further minimize the overall use of resources via smart input procurement based on resource availability and productivity.
Conclusion
Green agriculture, agroforestry and other multi-functional production systems relate a nexus approach to sustainable strengthening by decreasing external inputs, recycling waste products and producing co-benefits. Biomass production can thus become a central element of the bio-or green economy. When land is rehabilitated to simultaneously improve productivity and resilience, the co-benefits of such an ecosystem strategy will go much further.
While existing infrastructure would be needed for a nexus approach that integrates sectors and strengthens cooperation of many enterprises, we expect in many cases the resulting transaction costs would’ve been lower than that of the profits obtained from the reduced trade-offs and extra synergies that the nexus approach would create.[10]
There is already a clear momentum behind the idea of the nexus, which incorporates different concepts of sustainability that have been established since the 1972 Stockholm Human Environment Conference. In their quest for concrete Rio+20 results, the international community, policymakers, practitioners, and scientists should jointly draw on the idea. We propose that, as expressed in the MDGs, integrated SDGs will balance the need for human protection with the need to stay within planetary boundaries.
References:
[1] Vitaliy Soloviy. (2018). Nexus approaches promise a more sustainable future for all. Retrieved from https://www.sustainability-times.com/environmental-protection/nexus-approaches-promise-a-more-sustainable-future-for-all/#:~:text=The%20idea%20is%20simple%3A%20you,with%20sustainable%20behaviors%20in%20place.
[2] Eloise M. (2015). Sustainable development and the water–energy–food nexus: A perspective on livelihoods. Retrieved from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1462901115300563 .
[3] The Nexus Approach to Environmental Resources Management. (2019). Retrieved from https://flores.unu.edu/en/research/nexus .
[4] Mohan M. (2018). ANALYSING THE NEXUS OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT AND CLIMATE CHANGE. Retrieved from https://www.oecd.org/env/cc/2510070.pdf .
[5] David T. (2018). Nexus approaches to global sustainable development. Retrieved from https://www.canr.msu.edu/csis/Liu%20et%20al%202018%20Natural%20Sustainability.pdf .
[6] Aurobata Das. (2020). Evaluation of Nexus-Sustainability and Conventional Approaches for Optimal Water-Energy-Land-Crop Planning in an Irrigated Canal Command. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1007/s11269-020-02547-y .
[7] Deng, H. M., Wang, C., Cai, W. J., Liu, Y., & Zhang, L. X. (2020). Managing the water-energy-food nexus in China by adjusting critical final demands and supply chains: An input-output analysis. Science of The Total Environment, 720, 137635.
[8] Scott, A. (2017). Making governance work for water–energy–food nexus approaches.
[9] Michalec, A., Hayes, E., Longhurst, J., & Tudgey, D. (2019). Enhancing the communication potential of smart metering for energy and water. Utilities Policy, 56, 33-40.
[10] Sebestyén, V., Bulla, M., Rédey, Á., & Abonyi, J. (2019). Network model-based analysis of the goals, targets and indicators of sustainable development for strategic environmental assessment. Journal of environmental management, 238, 126-135.
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