A review of water-energy-food nexus frameworks, models, challenges and future opportunities to create an integrated, national security-based development index

Abstract

The Water-Energy-Food (WEF) Nexus has emerged as an innovative platform to assist with sustainable resource management. This review paper describes the WEF Nexus evolution during the last century and highlights its advances in tools, frameworks, and concepts. The paper critically assesses several aspects of the WEF Nexus including the milestones, major WEF frameworks, tools and models developed over the last twenty years, different WEF Nexus conceptualizations, and the significant support and investments reported in the 21st century. The relationship between the WEF Nexus and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is analyzed based on Nexus research studies, regional strategies or national programs were achieving WEF components lead to targeting some specific SDGs. The analysis of the principal WEF Nexus challenges and gaps emphasizes nature-driven crises such as water scarcity, energy shocks, and food shortages. Finally, the paper proposes a new business model that aims to quantify the water, energy, and food resources by country. The conceptual framework develops a WEF security index based on internationally recognized metrics and includes disaster risk and climate change, as well as trade-off as threats and contingency factors that are considered in the model. This review proposes a novel platform to assess the WEF security index per country as a pathway to contribute to SDGs 6,7,2,8 and 13.