Webinar // Nexus Seminar 87: Integrating WEFE Nexus Indicators for Assessing Sustainability in Farming Systems
In this seminar, participants were introduced to the WEFE Nexus Indicator (WEFNI) framework and explored how water, carbon, and energy footprints can be combined with socio-economic and ecological indicators to assess sustainability and support adaptive farm management under climate and resource constraints.
Introduction
The growing interconnections among water, energy, food, and ecosystems (WEFE) in small-scale farming systems call for holistic tools to assess and manage sustainability.
This session will introduce the WEFE Nexus Indicator (WEFNI) framework, designed to quantify and balance trade-offs among resource use, productivity, and environmental integrity at the farm level. Building on recent studies (Rhouma et al., 2025a; 2025b; Merheb et al., 2024), participants will explore how water, carbon, and energy footprints can be integrated with socio-economic and ecological metrics to derive a composite WEFE score—supporting adaptive management under climate and resource constraints.
The lecture will also examine links between the Sustainability Index and the WEFE Nexus Index, showing how these complementary frameworks together offer a more complete picture of farm sustainability and resilience. Applications to livestock systems will highlight how feed, water, energy, and welfare factors jointly shape environmental outcomes.
The Nexus Seminar Series is coordinated by Prof. Serena Coetzee and Jun.-Prof. Samanthi Dijkstra-Silva as part of the course Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Sustainability (the Nexus Approach), jointly offered by UNU-FLORES and TU Dresden.
Hosted by
Published on
18 November 2025
Main speaker
Prof. Ali Rhouma
Project officer at PRIMA foundation
Stream Webinar
You can access the webinar recording via YouTube here.