A PERSPECTIVE ON SUSTAINABILITY AND RESILIENCE IN INTERDEPENDENT WATER-ENERGY-FOOD SYSTEMS

Abstract:

Since the World Economic Forum highlighted the Water-Energy-Food-Climate nexus of issues, with examples that distinguised between the developing and developed country manifestations, there has been a tremendous interest in exploring related topics by academics, the media, industry, the public sector and leading politicians. It is clear that there is interdependence across these systems and exigencies in one can lead to impacts in the other. By and large, we have seen case studies exposing attributes of the nexus, and broad generalizations of the potential inersections. Some have proposed network models, others have spoken to the fact that the fragmentation of these issues across many institutions restricts the ability to manage these as an integrated control system. Given that hydroclimatic systems are globally connected dynamical systems that influence social systems that manage the production and consumption of water, food and energy, and are in turn influenced by them, one direction that needs to emerge is an understanding of the multiscale and bidirectional links between climate and the managed earth systems. However, a challenge in this regard is that our managed systems are not explicitly managed. We have market processes for food and energy, but with regulatory intervention and subsidies and incentives that often distort market outcomes. For water, we typically have disjunctive public sector managementof resources, with very limited market like approaches. How then can one understand the interlinked functioning of these systems, seek predictabiliy and develop rules that allow adaptive management across the nexus while developing a regulated market structure that stimulates innovation and cost reduction/efficiency improvements. This may be one of the more significant challenges facing those who wish to be earth system managers and postulate future scenarios, regulate emissions and foster life cycle thinking as part of green engineering. In this talk, I will try to lay out what I think are some possible directions for the associated science, and speculate on ways in which the world may evolve to address this nexus. In particular, I will highlight the importance of diverse data sources and their analysis to establish such directions, as opposed to a purely model based approach.