Indicators of Land, Water, Energy and Food (LWEF) Nexus Resource Drivers: A Perspective on Environmental Degradation in the Gidabo Watershed, Southern Ethiopia

Abstract

In Ethiopia, land, water, energy and food (LWEF) nexus resources are under pressure due to population growth, urbanization and unplanned consumption. The effect of this pressure has been a widely discussed topic in nexus resource literature. The evidence shows the predominantly negative impact of this; however, the impact of these factors is less explored from a local scale. As a result, securing nexus resources is becoming a serious challenge for the country. This necessitates the identification of the driving factors for the sustainable utilization of scarce LWEF nexus resources. Our study provides a systemic look at the driving factor indicators that induce nexus resource degradation. We use the Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP) to develop the indicators’ weights, and use a Path Analysis Model (PAM) to quantitatively estimate the effect of the driving factor indicators on the LWEF nexus resources. The results indicate that social (48%), economic (19%), and policy and institutional changes (14%) are the major nexus resource driving factor indicators. The path analysis results indicate that among the social driving factor indicators, population growth and consumption patterns have a significant direct effect on the LWEF nexus, with path coefficients of 0.15 and 0.089, respectively. Similarly, the potential of LWEF nexus resources is also influenced by the institutional and policy change drivers, such as outdated legislation and poor institutional structure, with path coefficients of 0.46 and 0.39, respectively. This implies that population growth and consumption patterns are the leading social drivers, while outdated legislation and poor institutional structures are the institutional and policies change drivers which have a potential impact on LWEF nexus resource degradation. Similarly, other driving factors such as environmental, economic and technological factors also affect nexus resources to varying degrees. The findings of our study show the benefits of managing the identified driving factors for the protection of LWEF nexus resources, which have close links with human health and the environment. In order to alleviate the adverse effects of driving factors, all stakeholders need to show permanent individual and collective commitment. Furthermore, we underline the necessity of applying LWEF nexus approaches to the management of these drivers, and to optimize the environmental and social outcomes.

The nexus across water, energy and food (WEF): Learning from research, building on evidence, strengthening practice

“…land, climate, soil). For example, Wolde et al (2021) focused on the land, water, energy and food (LWEF) nexus. In fact, 99 documents, reflecting approximately 13% of the total, considered sectors in addition to water‐energy‐food (+ other sector).…”

“…An example of a WEF publication that mentioned governance is a publication by Sušnik et al (2021), where they integrate policies, developed with relevant stakeholders to the model. An example of a WEF publication that captured gender is a publication by Wolde et al (2021) who analysed the impact of land, water, energy and food Nexus degradation on socioeconomic characteristics (including gender).…”

Evaluation for Water and Land Resources System Efficiency and Influencing Factors in China: A Two-Stage Network DEA Model

“…To further explore the influencing factors of water and land resources system efficiency, we selected population density, urbanization level, proportion of output value of secondary and tertiary industries, effective irrigation rate, proportion of construction land, and per land pesticide application as independent variables and annual overall efficiency values of water and land resources system in 31 provincial administrative regions as dependent variables to establish regression model [31][32][33][34]. After selecting the potential drivers, we performed collinearity diagnosis based on the ordinary least squares (OLS) regression model and eliminated potential drivers with a variance inflation factor (VIF) greater than 7.5.…”

Preliminary symbiotic performance of indigenous soybean (Glycine max)-nodulating rhizobia from agricultural soils of Tanzania

“…The growth in the global human population exceeds the food required in terms of quantities produced, availability, and accessibility not only due to a decrease in fertile, available arable land for food production, which is utilized for the construction of modern infrastructures but also due to the vulnerability of food systems to climate change (Sorvali et al, 2021;Sadigov, 2022), with water and energy becoming the limiting factors (Nassary et al, 2020). At the same insight, global food production needs to be increased by 70% by 2050 to meet the food demand of 9.5 billion people (Kopittke et al, 2019;Wolde et al, 2021). To ensure food security in terms of quantity produced, accessibility, availability, and nutrients, the agricultural output needs to be optimized to meet the global rise in food demand (Aloo et al, 2021;Nakei et al, 2022).…”