The Nexus Approach to Managing Water, Soil and Waste under Changing Climate and Growing Demands on Natural Resources - Governing the Nexus: Water, Soil and Waste Resources Considering Global Change - page 45

3.3 Poverty-Environment Nexus

There exists a strong poverty-environment nexus (Dasgupta et al. 2001 ). Indeed,
when people are poverty stricken and miserable, they pass on their sufferings to the
land (Lal 2008 ). Poverty is strongly linked with access to basic resources (e.g.,
water, energy, soil). Thus, poor households exacerbate environmental and resource
degradation. Agricultural, industrial and economic development are closely inter-
linked with the environment and climate. Therefore, any developmental strategies
must address the environment (climate change), food and energy (biofuel) security,
and land restoration. As such, development and climate (environment) nexus is an
important consideration (Davidson et al. 2003 ). In addition to agriculture, the urban
ecosystems (refer to urban agriculture in Sect. 4 ) are also affected by the water-
energy-environment nexus. Global climate change may exacerbate these challenges
(Novotny 2011 ; Smit and Parnell 2012 ). Thus, there is a need to improve resilience
of urban and agricultural ecosystems.

3.4 Soil-Water-Food Nexus

Two important determinants of global food security are soil and water resources.
These resources are finite, unequally distributed over the landscape and prone to

degradation and pollution by misuse and mismanagement. Rapid depletion of
ground water and salinization are examples of misuse and mismanagement of soil
and water resources (Khan et al. 2009 ). The low productivity of smallholder
agriculture in drier areas of the developing world may be attributed to the limited
availability of good quality soil and water resources (Twomlow et al. 2008 ). It is the
water movement in and through the soil regolith that impacts salinity and numerous
other pedogenic processes (Schoenberger and Wysocki 2005 ). Annual per capita
water availability is decreasing in the Indo-Gangetic Plains, North China Plains,
south central parts of the US Great Plains, etc. Thus, producing more crops and
livestock products per unit of agricultural water invested within the soilscape is a
key strategy of achieving food security.

3.5 Food Security-Natural Resources Nexus

Food security depends on an adequate availability of good quality soil, water and
nutrients, and on the ability to recycle water and nutrients through biogeochemistry
processes, which also enhance adaptation to climate change and other extreme
events (Fig. 3 ). The nexus between integrated natural resources management and
integrated water resources management is important to improving productivity of
smallholder agriculture (Twomlow et al. 2008 ). Being in short supply, sustainable