Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
real potential to address global change and indeed modify development trajectories
and outcomes. This is especially salient in the lead up to the 2015 transition to
Sustainable Development Goals.
The water-food nexus, in other words, irrigation and virtual water, have been
recognized for some time. The food-energy nexus, similarly with the intensi
cation
and mechanization of agriculture plus requirements for transport of food, is also
plainly apparent from the dual perspectives of resource use and management. In this
chapter, we treated the evolution of the concept of the water-energy nexus, both as
water for energy and energy for water. There is growing awareness of the need for
policy measures to address the institutional dimensions of the water-energy nexus.
Taken together, the three resources form the WEF Nexus, which we have shown
carries multivalent implications for human society and ecosystem resilience. Not-
withstanding the heightened complexity, new insights on the WEF Nexus point to
the three-way coupling of resources and multi-level institutional linkages that have
profound implications for human well-being, societal welfare, ecosystem resilience
and ultimately the sustainability of life on the planet as we know it. The WEF
Nexus, in other words, is a pivotal concept for scienti
c research and a policy tool
that allows for operationalization of links between sets of two resources (water-
food, food-energy, water-energy) building up to a triple nexus or triad approach to
adaptive management.
If we consider resource use efficiency in Lankford
'
s(
2013
) terms where con-
servation of resources leads to real savings that must then be subject to common-
property management in the
, we are presented with a unique set of
opportunities to internalize saved resources to offset depletion, mitigate third-party
or off-site damages, or for future use. The internalization of resources that previ-
ously had been externalized is the essential nexus challenge. There is no longer any
scope to externalize impacts; the planetary system is ultimately bounded and we
must allow for resource use and waste recovery to be practiced in such a way that
does not perpetuate with the conceptual fallacy of externalization.
Finally the WEF Nexus is particularly evident in countries such as India that
exhibit both emerging economy status and particularly acute constraints on
resources. While the nexus has emerged in contexts such as agriculture in South
Asia, it will increasingly play out in broader scales in this region. This poses
particular opportunities for innovation and experimentation. The principal chal-
lenges that remain, having demonstrated a series of resource linkages, are to upscale
innovative management concerns from local levels to address the policy and
institutional dimensions that we have indicated form the under-pinning societal and
ecosystem resilience practices leading to a virtuous cycle of sustainable and equi-
table development.
'
para-commons
'
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