Research Article // Developing narratives for policy-relevant water-energy-food-ecosystem nexus pathways: How global and European Union drivers interact
By Arfa et al. This study develops participatory, policy-relevant narratives that integrate global climate-socioeconomic pathways with European Union WEFE policies, identifying five possible futures up to 2050 and how global drivers shape the EU’s ability to achieve sustainability objectives.
Abstract
A The shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs) and representative concentration pathways (RCPs) were created for socioeconomic and climate change assessments and are widely used in global environmental assessments. However, mapping SSP-RCP pathways and policies for WEFE remains elusive. There is uncertainty on how to integrate current European Union (EU) policies with climate and socioeconomic pathways.
To address that uncertainty, we developed narratives describing possible policy-relevant WEFE nexus pathways until 2050 by collaborating with a broad range of stakeholders and experts. By mapping several SSP-RCP pathways with EU-WEFE policies, three primary policy-relevant WEFE pathways, namely “Sustainable Development,” “Weak Cooperation,” and “Global Fragmentation”, and two extreme pathways, “Emissions Neutrality” and “Global Risk,” were identified. For each of these pathways, a narrative was developed explaining how global and EU drivers interact. These narratives integrate climate, socioeconomic and governance drivers.
Findings show that the Emissions Neutrality pathway would require a high level of coordination between global and EU commitments. At the other end, Global Fragmentation represents a challenging future for the EU, showing that the global trends will condition the achievement of EU-WEFE objectives and highlighting the need for global coordination. Beyond the results, these narratives contribute to a better understanding of WEFE nexus. Furthermore, they can serve as a basis to explore potential future developments and asses WEFE nexus solutions.
Published
16 August 2025
In
Environmental Impact Assessment Review