A Conceptualization of the Urban Food-Energy-Water Nexus Sustainability Paradigm: Modeling From Theory to Practice

Abstract

Food is the essential foundation for sustainable and healthy communities. Increasing population and urbanization, limited resources, and complexities of interactions necessitate a comprehensive and in-depth understanding of the dynamics of the global trend of urbanization. The key objective of this paper is to generate new environmental, social and economic perspectives and practices that are responsive to the rapidly urbanizing agricultural food system. We used the sustainability paradigm in the context of environmental, social, and economic sustainability to outline the three transitioning states and perspectives (unconnected/silos; interconnected/linkages; and interdependent/nested/systems) for urban agricultural food systems. We sought to ferret out the key driver/response variables and their cross-scale interactions in the urbanizing food-energy-water nexus. We used a five-step qualitative analytical method to develop a conceptual model to capture the interacting variables and their responses. The complexity in the driver/response variables and their cross-scale interactions were identified. Then three hypothetical scenarios were used to represent complexity modeling: least, medium and most complex. These variables were combined with outside dimensions (e.g., innovation, stakeholders, urbanization) for selected scenarios and deconstructed using spider web and causal loop models. The urbanizing socio-ecological systems, across various spatial (local to global) and temporal scales (days to millennium) as well as smaller temporal scales (days to decades) are described. The iterative multidimensionality of the model makes clear new ways of seeing social issues and opens opportunities for policy solutions, resources and stakeholders to be brought to bear on the issues.

Huertos urbanos como estrategia de resiliencia urbana en países en desarrollo

“…Otros beneficios que ha generado el proyecto es la reducción del ruido, la creación de ambientes y paisajes más agradables (lo que reduce el estrés y mejora la sensación de bienestar) y la generación de empleo; por ejemplo, los hombres y mujeres en centros de readaptación social que producen los sustratos textiles (utilizados para sustituir a la tierra) compuestos al 100% por botellas PET recicladas. El sistema utilizado para riego es automatizado para aumentar su eficiencia (Gragg, 2018;Chávez, 2019).…”

“…Siguiendo con la proyección, para el año 2100 se espera que la población mundial llegue a 11.2 billones de habitantes, lo que implicará una enorme demanda de recursos; en las regiones en desarrollo y economías emergentes, como el caso del África subsahariana, Asia y América Latina, esta tendencia será más evidente al formar parte crucial en este crecimiento, ya que se estima que su población se expanda de manera más rápida que el resto de las regiones (Aloysius, 2015;Gragg et al, 2018; ONU, 2018).…”

“…Uno de ellos es la seguridad alimentaria y nutricional. Con estos datos, se prevé que la producción de alimentos deberá incrementarse entre el 70% y el 100%; asimismo, la disponibilidad de agua que este aumento exige, sumada a la actual situación de muchos países donde la deficiencia de este recurso está llegando a niveles alarmantes, genera oportunidades para que su uso sea más eficiente (Gragg, 2018).…”

Water Management for Sustainable Food Production

“…The key challenges to sustainable food production are population increase, availability of resources at the right time and place, threats posed by climate variability and extremes to land and water which are often exacerbated by other biophysical limits such as declining per-capita land and water scarcity, as well as rising demand for agricultural products [1,2]. The emerging consensus is that the world likely will exceed nine billion people by 2050, requiring 70%, 80%, and 55%, more food, water, and energy, respectively [3][4][5]. Increasing agricultural productivity and developing sustainable water management techniques are needed to feed the ever-increasing population [1,6].…”

Effects of urbanization on food-energy-water systems in mega-urban regions: a case study of the Bohai MUR, China

“…Notably, the exacerbation of pressure on FEW systems is mainly caused by external factors and internal characteristics of the system (Fang et al 2017. Some previous studies focused on the FEW flows and nexus in watersheds, cities, megacities and regions (Kennedy et al 2015, Endo et al 2017, Cai et al 2018, Gragg et al 2018, Taniguchi et al 2018, Yang and Wi 2018, which furthered our understanding of the internal characteristics of the system. Studies have also shown that changes in one system have profound effects on other systems, because of the interdependencies and interactions between food, energy and water subsystems (Hoff 2011, Al-Saidi and Elagib 2017, Scanlon et al 2017, Cai et al 2018, D'Odorico et al 2018.…”