Your search found 6 records
1 Ringler, C.; Willenbockel, D.; Perez, N.; Rosegrant, M.; Zhu, T.; Matthews, Nathanial. 2016. Global linkages among energy, food and water: an economic assessment. Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, 6(1):161-171. [doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13412-016-0386-5]
Food security ; Water management ; Water security ; Sanitation ; Sustainability ; Climate change ; Energy resources ; Renewable energy ; Economic aspects ; Fossils ; Biofuels ; Fuels ; Agricultural products ; Prices ; Households ; Income
(Location: IWMI HQ Call no: e-copy only Record No: H047781)
(1.38 MB)
The resolution adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations on 25 September 2015 is symptomatic of the water-energy-food (WEF) nexus. It postulates goals and related targets for 2030 that include (1) End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture (SDG2); (2) Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all (SDG6); and (3) Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy for all (SDG7). There will be tradeoffs between achieving these goals particularly in the wake of changing consumption patterns and rising demands from a growing population expected to reach more than nine billion by 2050. This paper uses global economic analysis tools to assess the impacts of long-term changes in fossil fuel prices, for example, as a result of a carbon tax under the UNFCCC or in response to new, large findings of fossil energy sources, on water and food outcomes. We find that a fossil fuel tax would not adversely affect food security and could be a boon to global food security if it reduces adverse climate change impacts.
2 Bell, A.; Matthews, Nathanial; Zhang, W. 2016. Opportunities for improved promotion of ecosystem services in agriculture under the Water-Energy-Food Nexus. Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, 6(1):183-191. [doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13412-016-0366-9]
Payment for Ecosystem Services ; Payment agreements ; Water power ; Water security ; Water use ; Water quality ; Food security ; Energy consumption ; Agriculture ; Integrated management ; Pest management ; Drinking water ; Landscape ; Conservation agriculture ; Farmers ; Environmental management ; Case studies / Malawi / Cambodia / Vietnam / Shire River Basin
(Location: IWMI HQ Call no: e-copy only Record No: H047782)
In this study, we focus on water quality as a vehicle to illustrate the role that the water, energy, and food (WEF) Nexus perspective may have in promoting ecosystem services in agriculture. The mediation of water quality by terrestrial systems is a key ecosystem service for a range of actors (municipalities, fishers, industries, and energy providers) and is reshaped radically by agricultural activity. To address these impacts, many programs exist to promote improved land-use practices in agriculture; however, where these practices incur a cost or other burden to the farmer, adoption can be low unless some form of incentive is provided (as in a payment for ecosystem services (PES) program). Provision of such incentives can be a challenge to sustain in the long term, if there is not a clear beneficiary or other actor willing to provide them. Successfully closing the loop between impacts and incentives often requires identifying a measurable and valuable service with a clear central beneficiary that is impacted by the summative effects of the diffuse agricultural practices across the landscape. Drawing on cases from our own research, we demonstrate how the WEF Nexus perspective—by integrating non-point-source agricultural problems under well-defined energy issues—can highlight central beneficiaries of improved agricultural practice, where none may have existed otherwise.
3 Matthews, Nathanial. 2016. People and fresh water ecosystems: pressures, responses and resilience. Aquatic Procedia, 6:99-105. [doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aqpro.2016.06.012]
Freshwater ; Payment for Ecosystem Services ; Water power ; Urban development ; Resilience ; Water security ; Water resources ; Water demand ; Decision making
(Location: IWMI HQ Call no: e-copy only Record No: H047785)
(275 KB)
Freshwater ecosystems are central to the global water cycle, in local generation of freshwater flows, and the healthy functioning and resilience of other ecosystems. Freshwater security depends on healthy ecosystems. Current human threats to freshwater ecosystems include rapid infrastructure development and land-use change, inefficient water use and over-abstraction, and pollutants. These threats, combined with increasing demand for water resources, exacerbate the sustainable development challenge. By 2025, two-thirds of the world's population may be living in conditions of severe water stress. It is essential to find solutions that provide for the maintenance of freshwater ecosystems while meeting human needs. This paper examines responses to three pressures to freshwater ecosystems: declining ecosystem services, hydropower and urban development. It explores opportunities for improved decision-making and enhanced resilience including: better evaluation of trade-offs and interlinkages; improved monitoring; decision-making that incorporates long-term perspectives and risks; and the leveraging of crises to advance change.
4 Zeitoun, M.; Lankford, B.; Krueger, T.; Forsyth, T.; Carter, R.; Hoekstra, A. Y.; Taylor, R.; Varis, O.; Cleaver, F.; Boelens, R.; Swatuk, L.; Tickner, D.; Scott, C. A.; Mirumachi, N.; Matthews, Nathanial. 2016. Reductionist and integrative research approaches to complex water security policy challenges. Global Environmental Change, 39:143-154. [doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2016.04.010]
Water security ; Water policy ; Environmental effects ; Uncertainty ; Ecosystems ; Economic growth ; Rainfall-runoff relationships
(Location: IWMI HQ Call no: e-copy only Record No: H047786)
This article reviews and contrasts two approaches that water security researchers employ to advance understanding of the complexity of water-society policy challenges. A prevailing reductionist approach seeks to represent uncertainty through calculable risk, links national GDP tightly to hydro-climatological causes, and underplays diversity and politics in society. When adopted uncritically, this approach limits policy-makers to interventions that may reproduce inequalities, and that are too rigid to deal with future changes in society and climate. A second, more integrative, approach is found to address a range of uncertainties, explicitly recognise diversity in society and the environment, incorporate water resources that are less-easily controlled, and consider adaptive approaches to move beyond conventional supply-side prescriptions. The resultant policy recommendations are diverse, inclusive, and more likely to reach the marginalised in society, though they often encounter policy-uptake obstacles. The article concludes by defining a route towards more effective water security research and policy, which stresses analysis that matches the state of knowledge possessed, an expanded research agenda, and explicitly addresses inequities.
5 Zeitoun, M.; Cascao, A. E.; Warner, J.; Mirumachi, N.; Matthews, Nathanial. 2017. Transboundary water interaction III: contest and compliance. International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics, 17(2):271-294. [doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10784-016-9325-x]
International waters ; International cooperation ; International agreements ; Aquifers ; Rivers ; Political aspects ; Conflict / West Asia / Southeast Asia / Central Asia / Turkey / Iraq / Syria / India / Africa / Jordan River / Tigris River / Euphrates River / Ganges River / Mekong River / Amu Darya River / Nile River
(Location: IWMI HQ Call no: e-copy only Record No: H047787)
(0.97 MB)
This paper serves international water con ict resolution efforts by examining the ways that states contest hegemonic transboundary water arrangements. The conceptual framework of dynamic transboundary water interaction that it presents integrates theories about change and counter-hegemony to ascertain coercive, leverage, and liberating mechanisms through which contest and transformation of an arrangement occur. While the mechanisms can be active through sociopolitical processes either of compliance or of contest of the arrangement, most transboundary water interaction is found to contain elements of both. The role of power asymmetry is interpreted through classi cation of intervention strategies that seek to either in uence or challenge the arrangements. Coexisting contest and compliance serve to explain in part the stasis on the Jordan and Ganges rivers (where the non-hegemons have in effect consented to the arrangement), as well as the changes on the Tigris and Mekong rivers, and even more rapid changes on the Amu Darya and Nile rivers (where the non-hegemons have confronted power asymmetry through in uence and challenge). The framework also stresses how transboundary water events that may appear isolated are more accurately read within the many sociopolitical processes and arrangements they are shaped by. By clarifying the typically murky dynamics of interstate relations over transboundary waters, furthermore, the framework exposes a new suite of entry points for hydro-diplomatic initiatives.
6 Allan, T.; Matthews, Nathanial. 2016. The water, energy and food nexus and ecosystems: the political economy of food non-food supply chains. In Dodds, F.; Bartram, J. (Eds.). The water, food, energy and climate nexus: challenges and an agenda for action. Oxon, UK: Routledge - Earthscan. pp.78-89.
Food supply ; Food chains ; Ecosystems ; Water use ; Water resources ; Energy resources ; Energy management ; Energy consumption ; Political aspects ; Economic aspects ; Supply chain ; Private sector
(Location: IWMI HQ Call no: e-copy only Record No: H047828)
(0.36 MB)
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