active · WASH· Health

CGIAR Initiative: NEXUS Gains: Realizing Multiple Benefits Across Water, Energy, Food and Ecosystems

Water, land, energy, forests and biodiversity are highly interconnected and critical to nutrition, health and food security (Impact Area, IA1), poverty reduction, livelihoods and jobs (IA2), gender equality, youth and social inclusion (IA3), climate adaptation and mitigation (IA4), and environmental health and biodiversity (IA5) at multiple scales through multiple pathways.i,ii,iii Similarly, the SDGs are systemic, with interdependencies across goals mediated by water, energy, food and ecosystems.iv However, governments, stakeholders and investors struggle to manage systems change in the water-energy-food-ecosystems nexus and ensure changes are robust under climate change. NEXUS Gains addresses the challenge of optimizing trade-offs and building synergies to support SDG achievement through transformations in food, land and water systems nexus.  The transboundary nature of basins makes integrated and sustainable management of water, energy, food and ecosystems challenging (Figure 1; WEFE; note for ecosystems the particular focus on forests and biodiversity). Systems thinking helps avoid unintended consequences that would jeopardize sustainability and possibly exacerbate conflict. Good governance across boundaries and sectors requires strong institutions and actors willing to overcome silos and adopt new tools to support nexus approaches.v,vi,vii,viii Governments, investors and local communities are uncertain about where or how best to maintain, restore and improve ecosystems and biodiversity, regenerate agriculture, and support sustainable irrigation, clean energy, and agro-processing needs.ix Investments are often not coordinated. For instance, investments in water or energy remain often disconnected from policy goals of healthy diets,x re/afforestation often neglect ecosystem services across scales and socioeconomic development pathways. Women, youth and other vulnerable groups continue to bear the brunt of poorly developed WEFE systems.xi They struggle to access information, technology and needed skillsxii and are under-represented in leadership and decision-making - a lost opportunity in terms of their contributions toward sustainable and inclusive development pathways. South Asia’s breadbasket basins Ganges and Indus (focus: India, Nepal and Pakistan) are increasingly challenged by ground and surface water abstractions (among the most unsustainable in the world), climate change (among the most vulnerable countries), deforestation, drastic pollution, severe ecosystem degradation and biodiversityxiii and poor policies, putting 7% of the world’s food production at risk, with potentially devastating impacts on the wellbeing, health and livelihoods of an estimated 1 billion people.xiv Governments are calling for scaling sustainable and inclusive on-farm water management practices for improved livelihoods and nutrition, and jobs; renewable energy as a priority intervention; nutrition and gender equality in access to safe water for multiple uses are systemic challenges. However, policies are incoherent, fragmented and inefficient. In the Blue Nile basin (Ethiopia and Sudan) a rapidly growing population faces increasing food and nutrition insecurity from climate change, demographic change, severe ecosystem degradation and low productivity,xv lack of irrigation, and energy access. Transboundary conflicts over nexus resources are intense (e.g., GERD)xvi and growing with development and climatic change. Aral Sea Basin needs are similar, where glacial retreat, reliance on fossil fuels, and the depletion of the Aral Sea and other hydrological and ecological changes are aggravated by transboundary water conflicts, jeopardizing the region’s future. All focal basins are global hotspots for multi-sector risks based on anticipated stresses from climate change and development paths for the water and energy sectors, crop yields and habitat degradation.xvii These challenges are surmountable if water, energy, food and ecosystems are managed with an integrated approach.  Implementing NEXUS Gains Systems Approach at Basin Scale  NEXUS gains examines WEFE systems in transboundary basins of significant international relevance. Upstream/downstream interdependencies will be quantified, and the complexity of intersecting sub-national boundaries for policymaking and management of WEFE resources addressed by building on existing institutional strengths. Dependencies of interventions from farm to watershed to river basin scales will be analyzed to support social equity, economic efficiency and environmental sustainability across scales, sectors and other divides with a focus on gender, age, income and ethnicity.  The Nexus approach is multicentric, not water centric like integrated water resources management. It aims to connect systems to optimize equitable economic and social welfare and environmental sustainability. Therefore, it considers a broad range of actors and stakeholders to overcome disciplinary and administrative silos. It requires a polycentric and multi-level governance framework, which makes co-development and implementation of nexus solutions challenging as it is interwoven with a complex political economy.  NEXUS Gains focuses on river basins that combine landscape elements and ecological regions connected by water flows. Water balance parameters as a basis for resource management can be quantified for basins. Natural and anthropogenic characteristics determine responses such as floods and droughts, soil surface and groundwater recharge, changes in water level, wetlands, reservoirs and nutrient and pollution fluxes. Digital models help us understand and quantify system interdependencies and predict future conditions in a changing climate under evolving environmental and societal changes (e.g., water availability for food systems, energy production, forests and other land uses, and Aquatic terrestrial ecosystems).

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