Stakeholder Workshops Informing System Modeling—Analyzing the Urban Food–Water–Energy Nexus in Amman, Jordan

Abstract

Large cities worldwide are increasingly suffering from a nexus of food, water, and energy supply challenges. This complex nexus can be analyzed with modern physico-economic system models. Only when practical knowledge from those affected, experts, and decision makers is incorporated alongside various other data sources, however, are the analyses suitable for policy advice. Here, we present a concept for “Sustainability Nexus Workshops” suitable for extracting and preparing relevant practical knowledge for nexus modeling and apply it to the case of Amman, Jordan. The experiences of the workshop participants show that, although water scarcity is the predominant resource problem in Jordan, there is a close connection between food, water, and energy as well as between resource supply and urbanization. To prevent the foreseeable significant degradation of water supply security, actions are needed across all nexus dimensions. The stakeholders demonstrate an awareness of this and suggest a variety of technical measures, policy solutions, and individual behavioral changes—often in combination. Improving the supply of food, water, and energy requires political and institutional reforms. In developing these, it must be borne in mind that the prevalent informal structures and illegal activities are both strategies for coping with nexus challenges and causes of them.

Capturing Stakeholders’ Challenges of the Food–Water–Energy Nexus—A Participatory Approach for Pune and the Bhima Basin, India

“…While our results are specific to Pune and the Bhima basin, the developed methodology and the application of the conceptual systems model for the evaluation of response options are generalizable to any FWE nexus system. This is shown, for example, by [107], for the case of Amman, Jordan, where a similar approach was successfully tested in a very different context.…”

How to Rebalance the Land-Use Structure after Large Infrastructure Construction? From the Perspective of Government Attention Evolution

“…However, if the local government is unwilling to restrict the use of land or cultivated land for the construction of large infrastructure, their land-use decisions may damage the construction and operation of important national large infrastructure [24]. The study suggests that the federal government, state governments, and local governments must "share the challenges" and make responsible land-use decisions through cooperative efforts to protect cultivated land for global food security [25]. In countries or regions where the state dominates land planning, the land-use planning power of local governments comes from the authorization of the central government, which is a series of top-down and prospective planning systems [26].…”