Nexus Research Overview // A Review of the Current State of Research on the Water, Energy, and Food Nexus
By Aiko Endo, Izumi Tsurita, Kimberly Burnett and Pedcris M.Orencio. The purpose of this paper is to review and analyze the water, energy, and food nexus and regions of study, nexus keywords and stakeholders in order to understand the current state of nexus research.
This paper attempts to understand the current status of research on the water-energy-food nexus, with the hypothesis that to date the research in this area has been somewhat fragmented. Although there were more than 53,000 hits recorded during a Google search of the phrase ‘water-energy-food nexus’ (as of June 2014), there is no clear definition of the term ‘nexus’. Unlike biodiversity conservation or climate change research and policies led by specific United Nations Conventions, the nexus has yet to be officially facilitated, implemented, and acknowledged in a uniform way. In addition, the relationships of all three resources such as water–energy, water–food and/or water–energy–food are interrelated and interdependent, which implies that the complexity of the nexus system has not yet been clarified. Furthermore, there seems to be very few reviews on the nexus, as the concept consists of multiple disciplines, as well as interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research results.
The paper is part of the special issue of the Journal of Hydrology.
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Published
December 2015
In
Journal of Hydrology: Regional Studies, Volume 11, June 2017, Pages 20-30