Dataset Information

Impacts of irrigated agriculture on food-energy-water-CO₂ nexus across metacoupled systems.

ABSTRACT: Irrigated agriculture has important implications for achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. However, there is a lack of systematic and quantitative analyses of its impacts on food-energy-water-CO₂ nexus. Here we studied impacts of irrigated agriculture on food-energy-water-CO₂ nexus across food sending systems (the North China Plain (NCP)), food receiving systems (the rest of China) and spillover systems (Hubei Province, affected by interactions between sending and receiving systems), using life cycle assessment, model scenarios, and the framework of metacoupling (socioeconomic-environmental interactions within and across borders). Results indicated that food supply from the NCP promoted food sustainability in the rest of China, but the NCP consumed over four times more water than its total annual renewable water, with large variations in food-energy-water-CO₂ nexus across counties. Although Hubei Province was seldom directly involved in the food trade, it experienced substantial losses in water and land due to the construction of the South-to-North Water Transfer Project which aims to alleviate water shortages in the NCP. This study suggests the need to understand impacts of agriculture on food-energy-water-CO₂ nexus in other parts of the world to achieve global sustainability.

SUBMITTER: Xu Z

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7672069 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Impacts of irrigated agriculture on food-energy-water-CO2 nexus across metacoupled systems.

Xu Zhenci Z Chen Xiuzhi X Liu Jianguo J Zhang Yu Y Chau Sophia S Bhattarai Nishan N Wang Ye Y Li Yingjie Y Connor Thomas T Li Yunkai Y

Nature communications 20201117 1

Irrigated agriculture has important implications for achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. However, there is a lack of systematic and quantitative analyses of its impacts on food-energy-water-CO2 nexus. Here we studied impacts of irrigated agriculture on food-energy-water-CO2 nexus across food sending systems (the North China Plain (NCP)), food receiving systems (the rest of China) and spillover systems (Hubei Province, affected by interactions between ...[more]

PMID: 33203840

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Project description:There is a need to address resource security and distributional justice in developing countries. People need water, energy, and food to sustain their livelihoods, grow economies, and achieve sustainable development. The interactions between these resource sectors form the crux of water-energy-food (WEF) nexus assessments. In this study, we have utilised the WEF Nexus Index to analyse the WEF nexus of 54 African nations. The results from the analysis were used to illustrate the opportunities and constraints for future development. Generally, African countries are performing sub-optimally in the WEF Nexus Index due to the insecurity of water, energy and/or food. The performance of countries varies with context, highlighting the need for contextual analysis in identifying challenges and potential solutions. Implementation of interventions for achieving WEF security needs to be planned from an integrated perspective to optimise synergies and minimize trade-offs. Implementation of the WEF nexus approach towards simultaneous security of WEF resources has potential to improve the WEF nexus. For example and for many African countries, policies that undergird investments in energy supply projects are needed to unlock available freshwater resources and meet food requirements-energy is shown to be a critical enabler of development. Such projects can be utilised to enhance the ability of farmers to manage water through drought-proofing rainfed agriculture, an increase in irrigation development, or both. WEF nexus-based studies, policies, and projects must be focused on the direct and indirect achievement of SDGs 1, 2, 6, 7, and 13, both in terms of access and availability, to ensure distributional justice, especially in the African context. Such actions, combined with broad public participation, can have a ripple effect on other SDGs such as SDGs 5, 10, and 17, thereby reducing inequalities and building partnerships to attain these aspirational goals. The assessment of Africa's relatively low scores in terms of the WEF Nexus Index does not represent a negative narrative. Instead, it provides an entry point to identifying hotspots and understanding the underlying challenges, through which more detailed analyses can lead to identified solutions and policies. Many African countries are trapped in an environment that could be termed a 'poverty-unemployment-inequality nexus' (due to the interlinkages that exist between these 'wicked' problems). The WEF Nexus Index provides high-level insights into these opportunities.

Project description:Household water food and energy (WFE) expenditures, reflect respective survival needs for which their resources and social welfare are inter-related. We developed a policy driven quantitative decision-making strategy (DMS) to address the domain geospatial entities' (nodes or administrative districts) of the WFE nexus, assumed to be information linked across the domain nodal-network. As investment in one of the inter-dependent nexus components may cause unexpected shock to the others, we refer to the WFE normalized expenditures product (Volume) as representing the nexus holistic measure. Volume rate conforms to Boltzman entropy suggesting directed information from high to low Volume nodes. Our hypothesis of causality-driven directional information is exemplified by a sharp price increase in wheat and rice, for U.S. and Thailand respectively, that manifests its impact on the temporal trend of Israel's administrative districts of the WFE expenditures. Welfare mass (WM) represents the node's Volume combined with its income and population density. Formulation is suggested for the nodal-network WM temporal balance where each node is scaled by a human-factor (HF) for subjective attitude and a superimposed nodal source/sink term manifesting policy decision. Our management tool is based on two sequential governance processes: one starting with historical data mapping the mean temporal nodal Volumes to single out extremes, and the second is followed by WM balance simulation predicting nodal-network outcome of policy driven targeting. In view of the proof of concept by model simulations in in our previous research, here HF extends the model and attention is devoted to emphasize how the current developed decision-making approach categorically differs from existing nexus related methods. The first governance process is exemplified demonstrating illustrations for Israel's districts. Findings show higher expenditures for water and lower for energy, and maps pointing to extremes in districts' mean temporal Volume. Illustrations of domain surfaces for that period enable assessment of relative inclination trends of the normalized Water, Food and Energy directions continuum assembled from time stations, and evolution trends for each of the WFE components.

Dataset Information

Impacts of irrigated agriculture on food-energy-water-CO₂ nexus across metacoupled systems.

Publications

Impacts of irrigated agriculture on food-energy-water-CO<sub>2</sub> nexus across metacoupled systems.

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