Asia: managing interdependencies

In the WEF Nexus approach, there is an acknowledgment of a trade-off and synergy for holistic management of water, energy, and food resources. The objective is to achieve water, energy, and food security together with environmental concerns and avoid conflicts amongst users. As 60 percent of the world’s population resides in Asia, where there is increasing competition among these resources, the Nexus approach is being used as a broad perspective to understand geopolitical competition and strategize in the long term.

Asia faces intense pressure on water and land resources. Producing food for a single individual every day requires between 2,000 and 5,000 liters of water. Agriculture accounts for 72 percent of global freshwater withdrawals, and 90 percent of global power generation is water intensive. According to projections, food demand will rise by 50 percent by 2050. Climate change will shift rainfall distribution, accelerate snowmelt, and increase droughts. Collectively, these issues will necessitate the integration of resource management.

India's approach

There is increasing recognition of the importance of Nexus thinking in policy documents across many countries of Asia. However, it has not yet been fully institutionalized. The Water-Energy-Food (WEF) Nexus refers to an approach that recognizes the interconnectedness between water, energy, and food systems. According to the WEF Nexus Index (2023), India ranks 95th globally, with sectoral ranks of 82nd in water, 131st in energy, and 131st in food.

National Water Policy (2002, later revised) treats water as an important natural resource and a basic human need, putting drinking water at the top of the list, followed by irrigation, hydropower, ecology, agro-industries and other non-agricultural industries. It considers non-conventional options like inter-basin transfer, artificial recharge of groundwater, desalination of brackish/seawater, and other options for augmenting utilisable water as imperative.

Implementation hurdles in India include erratic groundwater extraction, unsustainable urban water consumption, pollution from industry and farming, and untreated sewage. These are affected by climate change through changing precipitation patterns and snowmelt in mountainous regions, and a higher frequency of droughts. Spatially, six states/UTs have less than 75 percent household connectivity to tap water, and seven states/UTs have not reached 100 percent household electricity connection. States such as Bihar, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Jharkhand, and Assam have among the highest prevalence of wasting among children under the age of five years.

China’s regional disparities 

Understanding the interactions between water, energy, land, and food (WELF) is crucial for China to achieve a low-carbon transition. Ying et al. evaluated the performance of the Water–Energy–Land–Food (WELF) Nexus as a whole in various provinces of China and found that there is a large gap between regions with high and low Nexus efficiency, with developed regions having better integration and utilization of resources and less-developed regions having more structural problems.

Nexus considerations have been heralded in China’s 14th five-year plan through integrated resource management approaches. System dynamics modelling of Nexus issues in a resource-based region such as Daqing City has shown that the production structure adjustment scheme and the WEF resources saving scheme can help enhance resource security while jointly reducing pollution of the water environment, with policy suggestions for promoting the coordinated development of WEFN systems.

An example of regionally tailored adaptive resilience approaches to the nexus is the Yellow River Basin. Multi-method spatial and temporal analysis for integrated management of multiple water resource uses can be applied in the context of climate change, resource competition, and growing uncertainty in socio-economic factors. 

The surge in demand in Southeast Asia 

Looking at the Southeast Asian countries, namely Thailand, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Vietnam, there is an unprecedented demand for food, energy, water, and land, and all of these resources are stressing the ecosystem. Using a WEFLC (Water–Energy–Food–Land–Climate) Nexus approach to sustainability for biomass, key differences can be seen among the countries, where cassava in Thailand and maize in India use water and energy efficiently compared to other crops, with low emissions, contrasting with palm oil and rice, which have greater resource use and higher emissions.

Findings from individual countries show strong pressures associated with groundwater over-extraction in India, land-use conflict in Indonesia, and governance fragmentation in Malaysia. Results from the stakeholder survey indicate that understanding of WEFLC is increasing; but, there are challenges with policy integration and coordination of different sectors.

Regional cooperation mechanisms 

Regional cooperation initiatives such as those emerging from the Nexus approach have brought together the Central and South Asia regions, which are divided in official and academic discourse. UNESCO’s recent publication, on the Nexus of water, energy, and food security in Asia and the Pacific, sets the context by looking at the state of the resources, breaks down the Nexus into water-energy and water-food, and analyses cross-sectoral issues for a Nexus security.

The region’s long-term social and economic prosperity will depend on how it attains water, energy, and food security. A new approach to achieving Nexus security is being offered by the Sustainable Development Goals, i.e., SDG 6 (ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all).

Key challenges in Nexus integration 

Rapid urbanization: as the urban population rises across Asia, the demand for water intensifies for household consumption, energy demand for air conditioning, electrical and other infrastructure support, and food intake. Cooling water withdrawals for power plants constitute 43 percent of total freshwater withdrawals in Europe, nearly half in the USA, and over 10 percent of the national water quota for China. Overall urban water sustainability needs greater attention with integrated planning and management perspectives.
 

Population growth and industrialization increase energy needs: global water-use efficiency increased by 20 percent between 2015 and 2021, but 58 percent of countries (mostly those with agriculture-based economies) that reported data have low water-use efficiency. High food prices make food less affordable, and small farmers have limited access to markets.
 

The implementation of the Nexus approach faces several hurdles, including fragmented governance across different sectors and geographic regions. For instance, in Malaysia, governance institutions are generally weak and fragmented; in Indonesia, strong conflicts over land use; and in India, groundwater depletion is significant. Addressing policy coherence and coordination problems between water, energy, and food ministries is essential for cross-sector coordination.
 

Desalination and linked infrastructures: national policies encourage the use of desalination of brackish or sea water as a non-conventional source for increasing resources. Desalination is an energy-hungry technology that has trade-offs with energy security; linked infrastructures that couple desalination with renewable energy can address these tensions.
 

Low water-intensity technologies in energy generation (i.e., wind, geothermal) and agriculture (precision irrigation) alleviate energy-water nexus issues: geothermal energy is a promising source of sustainable, climate-independent, and long-term energy that has negligible-to-no greenhouse gas emissions and zero water consumption. Precision irrigation using information from the water providers conserves water and energy in the agrifood chain.
 

Implications for agriculture: agriculture is closely interconnected with water and energy, making it suitable for WEF nexus consideration. Sustainable agriculture depends on a critical relationship between land, soil, and water. Efficiency measures are needed across the entire agrifood system to protect natural ecosystems as well as agricultural and energy production. Mono-cropping can lower soil fertility, and poor soil quality can reduce crop production.

Opportunities for integrated policy design

Institutionalizing Nexus approaches: in order to institutionalize the nexus approach, national planning, budgeting, and reporting must also adopt the principles of nexus management. Long-term policy and strategic documents need to integrate the management principles of FWE (food, water, energy).
 

Green infrastructure: building green infrastructure, such as land dams that collect runoff from arable fields, or forest planting to protect soils and enhance groundwater recharge, would lead to a more sustainable nexus and green economy. We need to start appreciating the ecosystem for its life-affirming services rather than compromising it to sustain food and energy demands.
 

Promote renewable energy development: governments need to step up the development of renewable energy sources, prioritizing less water-intensive renewables like hydropower and wind power.
 

Integration of water resources: combining Central Asia and South Asia into a single regional nexus is sensible due to the shared river basins and resource utilization. Addressing region-specific policy gaps provides a supplementary framework to national level policies.
 

Trade-off and synergy analysis: based on the Nexus approach, this article provides an informed and transparent methodology to an appropriate trade-off and synergy that does not jeopardize the integrity and sustainability of the ecosystem. Solutions tailored to specific contexts with both high- and low-level intervention targets achieve economic, environmental, and social objectives in the longer term.

Toward resilient policy frameworks 

There is a growing recognition among governments throughout Asia that water, energy, and food security are inextricably linked. So, many are starting to incorporate the Nexus approach into their long-term national and regional planning. Connectivity between the policy realms of water, energy, and food is evident in an increasing number of strategies, with coordination mechanisms and regional initiatives beginning to emerge.

Rapid urbanization, demographic challenges, and institutional disparities are key challenges that need to be addressed. Opportunities include formalizing a Nexus-based approach, investing in green infrastructure, deploying renewable energy on a large scale, and encouraging trans-regional resource planning. Recognizing the trade-offs and synergies will help Asian policymakers encourage more integrated policy planning in the region.

Geopolitical competition can also be conceived through the Nexus lens, providing an orientation towards sustainable development. In the context of the unprecedented demand for resources in Asia, sustainable social and economic development will depend on the integrated management of water, energy, and food.