The Water-Energy-Food Nexus: Enhancing Adaptive Capacity to Complex Global Challenges

Enter the 'nexus' of multiple resources, linked in turn to management and policy frameworks, and embedded in broader political processes. The nexus conceptually links multiple resource-use practices and serves paradigmatically to understand interrelations among such practices that were previously considered in isolation. Here we will demonstrate that resource recovery is at the core of operationalizing the nexus. This is fundamentally different from efficiency and productivity, although nexus practices can be seen in terms of deriving increased output from limited resources.

Scott, C.A., M. Kurian, J.L. Wescoat, Jr. 2015. The Water-energy-food nexus: Adaptive capacity to complex global challenges. In M. Kurian and R. Ardakanian (eds.). Governing the Nexus: Water, Soil and Waste Resources Considering Global Change. Springer, Berlin, pp. 15-38.