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while Padmanaban and Sarkar ( 2001 ) and Malik ( 2002 ) identi
ed the groundwater-
electricity nexus analytical and policy approach, which was developed and con-
solidated in India by Shah et al. ( 2003 , 2007a , b ), who emphasized the need for
knowledge transfer between the farming and electricity sectors, and by Kumar
( 2005 ). The electricity-for-water nexus was applied to Jordan by Scott et al. ( 2003 )
and extended to Mexico by Scott and Shah ( 2004 ) and Scott et al. ( 2004a , b ) with
particular attention to policy and legal dimensions that expanded the physical-
resource conception of the nexus.
Simultaneously, but once again in relative isolation from groundwater-electricity
linkages, the converse resource dependence of water demands for energy generation
were emerging under the nexus banner in the Western U.S. (Lofman et al. 2002 ;
Government Accountability Of
ce 2009 ; Sovacool and Sovacool 2009 to cite a
few), promoted by Sandia National Laboratory (Hightower and Pierce 2008 ),
universities in water-scarce states (Scott and Pasqualetti 2010 ; Kenney and Wil-
kinson 2011 ), the Electric Power Research Institute ( 2002 ), Natural Resources
Defense Council and Paci
c Institute (Wolff et al. 2004 ), the Stockholm Envi-
ronment Institute (Fisher and Ackerman 2011 ), and others (Grif
ths-Sattenspiel and
Wilson 2009 ; Carter 2010 ). Similar studies were also published in Europe (Bailey
2011 ; Floerke et al. 2011 ; Hardy et al. 2012 ) and for the Middle East (Siddiqi and
Anadon 2011 ). Later studies cited here increasingly recognized bidirectional water-
energy nexus links, accounting for the energy needed to produce energy as well as
the energy requirements of water management.
1.2 Emergence of the Water-Energy-Food Nexus
Use of any two terms suggests speci
c subsectors or issues, while three inter-
linkages are considerably more multivalent. For example, the water and energy
linkage may suggest hydropower, power plant cooling or groundwater pumping.
The water and food linkage usually evokes irrigation and perhaps rainwater har-
vesting. The energy and food linkage most commonly raises concerns about bio-
fuels versus crops trade-offs. However, the three sectors considered jointly include
and transcend these speci
c sectoral linkages. They imply integrated, almost
comprehensive, natural resource systems.
However, formal published recognition of the three-way mutual interactions
among water, energy and food; branded as the WEF Nexus that is of principal
concern in this chapter did not appear until 2008 (Hellegers et al. 2008 ; Siegfried
et al. 2008 ). Again, the WEF Nexus had a signi
cant focus on India, in part because
the Hellegers et al. piece emanated from a workshop held in 2006 in Hyderabad,
India, which itself built on groundwater irrigation (electricity nexus work cited
above). This was followed in short order by Lopez-Gunn ( 2009 ) placing the WEF
Nexus in an adaptation context, Lazarus ( 2010 ), Hoff ( 2011 ) as further elaborated
below, Scott ( 2011 ) with emphasis on climate change drivers, Wescoat and
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