Nexus Among Materials in Socioeconomic System

Food and water are essential for human existence, and energy is the key to human development. Access to these resources and their sustainable management are the basis for sustainable development. Efficient use of these limited or declining resources is essential to sustainability. The concept of the food-water-energy (FWE) nexus emerged from international conversations on resource security and sustainable development. The FWE nexus offers an analytic framework to better understand and systematically analyze the interactions between resource systems, the natural environment, and human activities across sectors and scales. This chapter is composed of five sections: food-water nexus, water-energy nexus, food-energy nexus, food-water-energy nexus, and food-water-energy-carbon nexus. Food-water nexus is mainly concerned with agricultural production, where the amount of water withdrawn far exceeds the amount of water used by humans in other ways. Water-energy nexus is primarily concerned with water use in power generation, but is also indirectly linked to hydrological changes associated with hydropower development. Food-energy nexus not only details the relationship between the food system in terms of energy consumption for food production and the energy system in terms of food provision for energy production, but also analyzes the possible environmental problems in the interrelationship. Meanwhile, this chapter will describe food-water-energy nexus and food-water-energy-carbon nexus with two case studies.