Civil Engineering Department, Iran University of Science & Technology, Tehran, Iran.
Civil Engineering Department, University of California, Davis, CA, USA.
Environ Sci Pollut Res Int. 2023 Oct;30(49):107487-107497. doi: 10.1007/s11356-021-13034-1. Epub 2021 Feb 25.
In recent decades, global forecasts show that the demands for freshwater, energy, and food have been affected by population growth, economic development, international trade, and increasing urbanization and food diversity. Moreover, cultural changes and other phenomena have adversely affected the water, energy, and food (WEF) resources demand. Consequently, climate change adverse impact, which is an undesirable phenomenon, will be increased at a staggering rate. Numerous studies have emphasized that the lack of integrated and systematic management strategies threaten these indispensable resources' ability to meet growing demand. In many countries, the security of WEF resources, which is related to each other, has become three non-traditional security challenges that overshadow these communities' development. Before realizing the importance of interactions between these three vital resources, the management strategies were typically used for one source, which was completely independent of the other two. Since these strategies did not consider the interactions between the three systems, the applied strategies' results were sometimes contradictory. Also, due to the lack of attention to these three sectors' vital connections, the competition level among these systems has been increased. Therefore, in recent years, the study of the complex interactions and connections between these resources has led to the emergence of a new term called WEF nexus in the scientific communities. Most studies about the WEF nexus have only described the current situation or, ideally, analyzed several predetermined scenarios. However, the adopted approach should be able to analyze different scenarios and be efficient and robust enough to develop a variety of strategies and utilize them for macro-policies. In this study, after reviewing the complex interactions between the WEF systems, it was tried to introduce a novel paradigm for the WEF nexus, which concentrates on expanding the possible space of WEF nexus.
近几十年来，全球预测表明，人口增长、经济发展、国际贸易以及城市化和食品多样化的增加，都对淡水、能源和粮食的需求产生了影响。此外，文化变革和其他现象对水、能源和粮食（WEF）资源的需求也产生了不利影响。因此，气候变化的不利影响将以惊人的速度增加。许多研究强调，缺乏综合和系统的管理策略威胁到这些不可或缺资源满足日益增长的需求的能力。在许多国家，相互关联的 WEF 资源的安全已成为三个非传统安全挑战，这些挑战掩盖了这些社区的发展。在意识到这三种重要资源之间相互作用的重要性之前，管理策略通常用于一个完全独立于其他两个资源的来源。由于这些策略没有考虑到这三个系统之间的相互作用，因此应用的策略的结果有时是相互矛盾的。此外，由于缺乏对这三个部门重要联系的关注，这些系统之间的竞争水平有所提高。因此，近年来，对这些资源之间复杂相互作用和联系的研究导致了科学界出现了一个新术语，称为 WEF nexus。大多数关于 WEF nexus 的研究仅描述了当前的情况，或者理想情况下，分析了几个预定的情景。然而，所采用的方法应该能够分析不同的情景，并且高效和稳健，以制定各种策略并将其用于宏观政策。在本研究中，在审查了 WEF 系统之间的复杂相互作用之后，我们试图引入一种 WEF nexus 的新范式，该范式侧重于扩大 WEF nexus 的可能空间。
