ICID Webinar on Application of Models in Water-Energy-Food Nexus

#waterenergyfoodnexus #nexus #webinar #icid #iwmi
The world’s population is expected to grow from 8 billion today to at least 9.8 billion by the year 2050. The population growth, urbanization and industrialization are imposing rapidly growing demands and pressures on the water and energy resources and causing, in many cases, imbalance between water supply and demand. This growing imbalance has led to shortages, competition, and other environmental pressures. Achieving food, water and energy security as well as improving the quality of life, while preserving the environment, will continue to pose major challenges to scientists, decision makers and technicians in the next few decades. Irrigation globally consumes around 70% of freshwater resources. This water is becoming increasingly scarce. Irrigation requires energy. Therefore, improving water and energy use efficiency and productivity in agriculture practices will be valuable.
The interdependence of the water, food and energy is well known since early civilization. The present challenge is how to produce more crop per drop per kilowatt energy per unit area of land. This is the essence of new focus on the nexus. The WEF Nexus has benefit at local, regional, national and trans boundary scales. Attempts were made to quantify the Nexus by the integration of water, energy and food securities. These securities accounts for accessibility and availability of those three elements.
The WEF nexus approach is a pathway for understanding complex and dynamic interlinkages between issues related to water, energy and food security. The WEF nexus is an innovative integrated approach through which cross-sectoral sustainability indicators can be derived. Sectoral approaches to resources management risk major and unintended consequences as they often fail to identify and manage cross-sectoral synergies and trade-offs. The model is a decision support tool that highlights priority areas for intervention. Use of appropriate models will help influence policy and resource planning at different administrative levels to ensure better management of WEF resources holistically and equitably.
This Webinar brings together expert presentations from India, South Africa, and IWMI to share experience, and views on the application of the Models in the implementation of the Water-Energy Food Nexus in Agriculture.
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