UNTWIST · UNraveling the knoT of the Water-energy-food nexus usIng ecosySTems services

UNraveling the knoT of the Water-energy-food nexus usIng ecosySTems services

Water, energy and food (WEF) are inextricably linked within a complex system (“the Nexus”) dominated by interactions, feedbacks and scales effects. At the same time, WEF security relies on services provided by healthy ecosystems. Accordingly, managing these systems by adopting a system wise approach, rather than a sectoral one, is becoming crucial to ensure, at the same time WEF security and ecosystems health. The vital need of policy coherence and integrated approaches across traditional development sectors is emphasised by the current EU development policy context (i.e. adoption of the 2030 Agenda and the Paris Agreement on Climate Change) recognizing how the nexus approach could help in addressing some of important EU Societal Challenges (i.e. climate action and environment; food security; secure, clean and efficient energy), supporting the achievement of multiple Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (i.e. SDG 2, 6, 7, 13). The recognition of interlinked nature of WEF has motivated the development of different theoretical frameworks to assist the understanding of the nexus and related sectors. However, despite recognizing that Ecosystem Services (ESs) represent the foundation of WEF nexus, their consideration in such frameworks is practically lacking. Tackling WEF resources issues cannot prescind by a systemic thinking coupling human and natural systems to deliver integrated solutions. ESs provide a unique framework to operationalize this integration as they represent the critical interactions between nature and human-being and thus permit to reveal synergies and conflicts between environmental and socio-economic goals underpinning the nexus. Another point that emerged from the analysis of literature on WEF is that most of the frameworks developed are inclined towards theory. While providing an effective qualitative description of nexus components and cause-effect relationships they fall short in quantitatively assess critical interactions occurring between WEF sectors. Integrated models able to accommodate data coming from sectorial models and flexible enough to deal with the uncertainty in future direction of global changes are strongly needed to move WEF nexus appraisal from theory to practice. Despite the use of AI in WEF application is still in its infancy, AI capabilities could result extremely useful to: maximize the use and utility of increasingly available interdisciplinary data repositories and ‘big data’ on WEF; capture characteristic nexus system features and patterns; and assist the characterization and quantification of critical interactions across scales and sectors. For this end, the overall objective of UNTWIST is to advance the assessment of water energy and food interactions by adopting an Ecosystem Services-based perspective. UNTWIST explored and demonstrated, through a practical case study application, the potential of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in developing integrated and interoperable models supporting the quantification of critical interactions among WEF nexus sectors.

Текст от CORDIS, на английски · Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз