Lucca Enrico, Kofinas Dimitris, Avellán Tamara, Kleemann Janina, Mooren Caro E, Blicharska Malgorzata, Teutschbein Claudia, Sperotto Anna, Sušnik Janez, Milliken Sarah, Fader Marianela, Đorđević Dejana, Dašić Tina, Vasilić Violeta, Taiwo Bamgboye, Baubekova Aziza, Pineda-Martos Rocío, Spyropoulou Alexandra, Baganz Gösta F M, El Jeitany Jerome, Oral Hasan Volkan, Merheb Mohammad, Castelli Giulio, Pagano Alessandro, Sambo Beatrice, Suškevičs Monika, Arnold Mona, Rađenović Tamara, Psomas Alexander, Masia Sara, La Jeunesse Isabelle, Amorocho-Daza Henry, Das Sherin S, Bresci Elena, Munaretto Stefania, Brouwer Floor, Laspidou Chrysi
Department of Agriculture, Food, Environment and Forestry (DAGRI), Università degli Studi di Firenze, Firenze, 50145, Italy.
Department of Civil Engineering, University of Thessaly, Volos, 38334, Greece; Sustainable Development Unit, Athena Research and Innovation Centre, Marousi, Greece.
Sci Total Environ. 2025 Feb 25;966:178600. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2025.178600. Epub 2025 Feb 10.
Integrated approaches for managing natural resources are said to meet increasing demand for water, energy, and food, while maintaining the integrity of ecosystems, and ensuring equitable access to resources. The Water-Energy-Food (WEF) Nexus has been proposed as a cross-sectoral approach to manage trade-offs and exploit synergies that arise among these sectors. Although not initially included as a component of the Nexus, the role of nature in sustaining the water, energy, and food sectors and in regulating their interrelationships is increasingly recognised by Nexus researchers and practitioners. To converge existing approaches that integrate nature into the WEF Nexus and suggest a common framework, we - an interdisciplinary group of natural resources management researchers and systems thinkers from the European research network NEXUSNET COST Action - followed a collaborative process of knowledge creation combining literature review, elicitation of expert opinion and collaborative writing. Our results reveal a multiplicity of concepts utilised in the literature to represent, partially or fully, "nature" in the Nexus, such as "environment", "ecosystems", "ecosystem services", "social-ecological systems", and "biodiversity". Disparity was also found in the role attributed to nature, represented by three key paradigms: (1) ecosystems as the fourth component of an expanded Nexus, i.e., the WEF-Ecosystems (WEFE) Nexus; (2) ecosystems as a foundational layer to the Nexus; and (3) the WEF Nexus as a central component of social-ecological systems (SES). By creating a hybrid approach that brings together the benefits of the respective paradigms, we present a forward-looking WEFE Nexus conceptualisation. This paradigm expands the mutual interlinkages among water, energy and food to the entirety of SES, thus acknowledging the social-ecological processes that are affected by and affect the WEF Nexus. The results of this collaborative research effort intend to provide researchers and stakeholders with means to better understand and ultimately manage Nexus issues towards a transformative change.
据说，自然资源综合管理方法既能满足对水、能源和食物日益增长的需求，又能维护生态系统的完整性，并确保资源的公平获取。水-能源-食物（WEF）关系被提议作为一种跨部门方法，用于管理这些部门之间出现的权衡取舍并利用协同效应。尽管自然在维持水、能源和食物部门以及调节它们的相互关系方面的作用最初并未被纳入该关系的组成部分，但WEF关系的研究者和从业者越来越认识到这一点。为了融合将自然纳入WEF关系的现有方法并提出一个通用框架，我们——来自欧洲研究网络NEXUSNET COST行动的自然资源管理研究人员和系统思考者组成的跨学科团队——遵循了一个知识创造的协作过程，该过程结合了文献综述、专家意见征集和协作写作。我们的研究结果揭示了文献中用于部分或全面代表关系中的“自然”的多种概念，如“环境”“生态系统”“生态系统服务”“社会-生态系统”和“生物多样性”。在赋予自然的角色方面也发现了差异，这由三个关键范式体现：（1）生态系统作为扩展关系的第四个组成部分，即水-能源-食物-生态系统（WEFE）关系；（2）生态系统作为关系的基础层；（3）WEF关系作为社会-生态系统（SES）的核心组成部分。通过创建一种融合各范式优点的混合方法，我们提出了一种前瞻性的WEFE关系概念化。这种范式将水、能源和食物之间的相互联系扩展到整个SES，从而承认了受WEF关系影响并影响WEF关系的社会-生态过程。这项协作研究工作的结果旨在为研究人员和利益相关者提供手段，以便更好地理解并最终管理关系问题，实现变革性变化。
