The Food-Water-Energy Nexus: Transforming Science for Sustainable Societies
An Asia Clean Energy Forum (ACEF) 2019 Deep Dive Workshop
Energy is vital to economic development. It is a critical input to water resources management—from pumping, transportation, treatment, and desalination. Energy powers agriculture—from farm equipment to food processing. Similarly, the water sector underpins energy production—from the extraction of raw materials, cooling of thermal power plants, cleaning processes, crop production for biofuels, and fuel for turbines. Water, of course, breathes life into agriculture.
Unfortunately, the push for inclusive but fragmented policy development in these sectors can lead to inadvertent adverse consequences. Farmlands are being converted to solar farms or crop production is diverted to biofuels, which threaten food security. In some cases, water-intensive biomass feedstocks are planted in water-stressed areas. The crucial interplay among these three sectors—water, energy, and food— requires a well-coordinated and delicate balancing of government policies, particularly in cases of resource scarcity.
This workshop sought to understand the complex interactions between energy production, food production, and urban water
supply, which is critical for effective decision-making; discuss science-based frameworks for navigating the water, energy and food nexus from technical and policy perspectives, including case studies from around the globe. It also explored the hydro-economic framework toolkit that simulates economic trade-offs and provided options given alternative scenarios, and defined policy options to efficiently allocate water resources among competing uses.
Date | Session / Activity | Presentation Material | Speaker(s) |
---|---|---|---|
19 Jun 2019 | Welcome Address | John Edgar, USAID Philippines | |
19 Jun 2019 | Know Your Resources: The Role of Hydrologic Modelling in the Food- Energy-Water Nexus | Benjamin Lord, RTI International | |
19 Jun 2019 | Role of Local Environment and Natural Resource Officers in the Efficient Allocation of Scarce Resources | Oliver Gonzales, PLLENRO | |
19 Jun 2019 | Water, Energy and Food Nexus: Mindanao Context | Romeo Montenegro, Mindanao Development Authority | |
19 Jun 2019 | From Science to Practice: Demonstration of an Interactive Dashboard for Exploring Decisions by Policy-makers | Divina Chingcuanco, RTI International | |
19 Jun 2019 | A Global Challenge: Water, Energy & Food Nexus Case Studies from an International Perspective | Benjamin Lord, RTI International | |
19 Jun 2019 | Food-Energy-Water-Resilience Nexus in India: Case study from State of Rajasthan | Narayankumar Sreekumar, The Energy & Resources Institute, India | |
19 Jun 2019 | Achieving Energy, Water and Food Sustainability through Agricultural Demand Side Management Elaborated Through a Case Study from Karnataka | Meghana Jayakumar, The Energy & Resources Institute, India |