Summary
Water, energy, and food systems are intricately linked—and should therefore be understood and managed in conjunction. This is also known as the WEF (Water-Energy-Food) nexus.
This paper reviews recent scientific publications concepts in order to:
- Examine the status quo on resilience thinking as it is applied in WEF nexus studies
- Map the research landscape along major research foci and conceptualizations
- Propose a research agenda of topics distilled from gaps in the current research landscape.
The paper identifies key conceptualizations of both resilience and nexus framings that are used across studies. It observes pronounced differences regarding the nexus’ nature, scope, emphasis and level of integration, and resilience’s scope, type, methodological and thematic foci.
Promising research avenues as mentioned in the paper include:
- Improving the understanding of resilience in the WEF nexus across scales, sectors, domains, and disciplines
- Developing tools and indicators to measure and assess resilience of WEF systems
- Bridging the implementation gap brought about by (governing) complexity
- Integrating or reconciling resilience and nexus thinking
- Considering other development principles and frameworks toward solving WEF challenges beside and beyond resilience, including control, efficiency, sustainability, and equity.