On the development of strategies for water and energy management in the context of the water-energy-food nexus

Food security is of emerging concern for many countries of the world, particularly in water scarce regions. Water scarcity is often coupled with an overuse of ground water resources in agriculture leading to declining water quality and food productivity in many arid countries. A resulting increasingly strong dependency on imports might give rise to a national food supply chain that does not exhibit acceptable resilience against potential short, medium and long term supply disruptions. A resilient system would be characterised by an appropriate balance between imports, reserves and domestic food production. The design of a resilient food system in an arid country poses a major challenge: the development of a resilient, low-impact water supply to support an appropriate level of domestic food production. Since energy is an important input to water production systems, effective solutions need to balance impacts across the water-energy-food nexus. The paper discusses water and energy strategies from the standpoint of an arid country with low agricultural production levels and declining groundwater resources and touches on the role of process systems engineering approaches in the development of integrated solutions across the water-energy-food nexus.