Developing the Pardee RAND Food-Energy-Water Security Index: Toward a Global Standardized, Quantitative, and Transparent Resource Assessment

Willis, Henry H.; Groves, David G.; Ringel, Jeanne S.; Mao, Zhimin; Efron, Shira; Abbott, Michele

doi:10.7249/tl165

Cited by 32 publications

(35 citation statements)

References 27 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…For example , Sušnik, (2015, Sušnik, ( , 2018 used global data to regress the countries' gross domestic product (GDP) against total/sectoral water withdrawals, total/specific crop production, and electricity consumption/generation, finding strong correlations between GDP per capita and all three resources metrics. Willis et al (2016) focused on measures of availability and accessibility of FEW resources to produce subindices for each resource that were then aggregated to a FEW index for countries globally. Both of these approaches overlooked governance factors, and the resources were siloed such that cross-sectoral influences (e.g., influence of water withdrawals and crop production on electricity consumed) were not considered.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Prominent Influence of Socioeconomic and Governance Factors on the Food‐Energy‐Water Nexus in sub‐Saharan Africa

2019

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Food, energy, and water (FEW) are primary resources required for human populations and ecosystems. Availability of the raw resources is essential, but equally important are the services that deliver resources to human populations, such as adequate access to safe drinking water, electricity, and sufficient food. Any failures in either resource availability or FEW resources-related services will have an impact on human health. The ability of countries to intervene and overcome the challenges in the FEW domain depends on governance, education, and economic capacities. We distinguish between FEW resources, FEW services, and FEW health outcomes to develop an analysis framework for evaluating interrelationships among these critical resources. The framework is applied using a data-driven approach for sub-Saharan African countries, a region with notable FEW insecurity challenges. The data-driven approach using a cross-validated stepwise regression analysis indicates that limited governance and socioeconomic capacity in sub-Saharan African countries, rather than lack of the primary resources, more significantly impact access to FEW services and associated health outcomes. The proposed framework helps develop a cohesive approach for evaluating FEW metrics and could be applied to other regions of the world to continue improving our understanding of the FEW nexus.

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Prominent Influence of Socioeconomic and Governance Factors on the Food‐Energy‐Water Nexus in sub‐Saharan Africa

2019

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Furthermore, many indicators are based on national‐level data, where data are most readily available to researchers. The application of indicators to nexus research has been slow to progress, though limited examples are beginning to emerge (Willis et al., ).…”

Section: Methodologies For Assessing the Nexusmentioning

confidence: 99%

Scaling the nexus: Towards integrated frameworks for analysing water, energy and food

McGrane

Acuto

Artioli

et al. 2018

Geographical Journal

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The emergence of the water–energy–food (WEF) nexus has resulted in changes to the way we perceive our natural resources. Stressors such as climate change and population growth have highlighted the fragility of our WEF systems, necessitating integrated solutions across multiple scales. While a number of frameworks and analytical tools have been developed since 2011, a comprehensive WEF nexus tool remains elusive, hindered in part by our limited data and understanding of the interdependencies and connections across the WEF systems. To achieve this, the community of academics, practitioners and policy‐makers invested in WEF nexus research are addressing several critical areas that currently remain as barriers. First, the plurality of scales (e.g., spatial, temporal, institutional, jurisdictional) necessitates a more comprehensive effort to assess interdependencies between water, energy and food, from household to institutional and national levels. Second, and closely related to scale, a lack of available data often hinders our ability to quantify physical stocks and flows of resources. Overcoming these barriers necessitates engaging multiple stakeholders, and using experiences and local insights to better understand nexus dynamics in particular locations or scenarios, and we exemplify this with the inclusion of a UK‐based case study on exploring the nexus in a particular geographical area. We elucidate many challenges that have arisen across nexus research, including the impact of multiple scales in operation, and concomitantly, what impact these scales have on data accessibility. We assess some of the critical frameworks and tools that are applied by nexus researchers and articulate some of the steps required to develop from nexus thinking to an operationalisable concept, with a consistent focus on scale and data availability.

show abstract

“…The maximum and minimum values to normalize indicators are shown in Table 1. The details of the method for normalizing are seen in Willis et al [9].…”

Section: Data Processingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As the most fundamental resources of economic and social development [1,2], food, energy, and water are closely interrelated [3][4][5][6][7][8][9]. With the growth of the population, urbanization and climate change as well as people's demand growing for food, energy and water, it is estimated that the nine billion people living on earth will need 30% more water, 40% more energy, and 50% more food to survive by 2030 [7,10,11].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Some scientists compare the functions and deficiencies of the existing nexus modeling methods and aim to enable decision makers to determine the tools that best suit their research needs and goals [6,[21][22][23][24][25]. In quantitative studies, in the aspect of research scale, Willis et al develop a global Pardee RAND (nonprofit corporation in America at https://www.rand.org/) food-energy-water security index (FEW Index) to provide information for development agencies and others studying food, energy, and water resources [9]. Some scientists try to manage the water-energy-food nexus at the regional scale [11,26].…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Spatiotemporal Distribution and the Driving Force of the Food-Energy-Water Nexus Index in Zhangye, Northwest China

et al. 2020

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

For more efficient development planning, food-energy-water (FEW) nexus indicators should be provided with higher spatial and temporal resolutions. This paper takes Zhangye, a typical oasis city in Northwest China's arid region, as an example, and uses the unweighted, geometric mean method to calculate a standardized, quantitative, and transparent estimation of the FEW nexus for each county. The role of influencing factors is also analyzed. The results showed that (1) the coordination of the FEW nexus in each county gradually increased from 2005 to 2015. Spatially, the distribution of the FEW nexus showed a tendency to be higher in the southwestern region and lower in the northeastern region. (2) Food security and water security were weaker than energy security. Specifically, there were more limitations to food accessibility, water availability, and water accessibility than for other indexes. (3) The FEW indexes are positively associated with per capita GDP (Gross Domestic Product) and negatively correlated with the average evaporation and altitude of each county (district). Decision makers should concentrate on combining industrial advantages, developing water-efficient ecological agriculture, and improving production quality to increase market competitiveness and should actively explore the international market.Since the Bonn conference of 2011 proposed the food-energy-water (FEW) nexus approach to increase efficiency, reduce trade-offs, build synergies, and improve governance across sectors, the FEW nexus have increasingly drawn worldwide attention [7,13,14]. From that point forward, research on FEW nexus has been reported in great detail. In particular, since 2016, an increasing number of papers related to FEW nexus have been published. There are both qualitative and quantitative studies. In terms of qualitative research, some scholars propose that water, energy, and food interact and have intricate interrelationships [15][16][17]. Some researchers indicate that comprehensive thinking should be used to solve the problems and challenges between FEW and to serve the sustainable development of the social economy and resource environment [14,[18][19][20]. Some scientists compare the functions and deficiencies of the existing nexus modeling methods and aim to enable decision makers to determine the tools that best suit their research needs and goals [6,[21][22][23][24][25]. In quantitative studies, in the aspect of research scale, Willis et al. develop a global Pardee RAND (nonprofit corporation in America at https://www.rand.org/) food-energy-water security index (FEW Index) to provide information for development agencies and others studying food, energy, and water resources [9]. Some scientists try to manage the water-energy-food nexus at the regional scale [11,26]. Some researchers quantify the water-energy-food nexus at the watershed scale [7,8,10,[27][28][29]. Li et al., Bai et al., and Wang et al. analyzed China's water-energy-food nexus at the national scale [2,30,31]. Gondhalekar and Ramsauer operationalize...

show abstract

Developing the Pardee RAND Food-Energy-Water Security Index: Toward a Global Standardized, Quantitative, and Transparent Resource Assessment

Cited by 32 publications

References 27 publications

Prominent Influence of Socioeconomic and Governance Factors on the Food‐Energy‐Water Nexus in sub‐Saharan Africa

Prominent Influence of Socioeconomic and Governance Factors on the Food‐Energy‐Water Nexus in sub‐Saharan Africa

Scaling the nexus: Towards integrated frameworks for analysing water, energy and food

Spatiotemporal Distribution and the Driving Force of the Food-Energy-Water Nexus Index in Zhangye, Northwest China

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About