18 The Water-Energy-Food Nexus with an Exploration of Gender Issues
Stephanie Buechler and Gabriel Scott-Buechler
Learning Objectives
At the end of the chapter, students will be able to:
- Summarize how the water–energy–food nexus helps elucidate resource issues and how policies and programs can address nexus challenges.
- Explain how the water–energy–food nexus approach is being used to achieve sustainability, security, and equity.
- Address why it is important to examine water–energy–food nexus issues from the perspective of gender.
Definitions
There is much ground to cover when discussing the water–energy–food (WEF) nexus. This chapter uses several acronyms, abbreviations, and concepts related to water, energy, food, and agricultural resources. While some of them may be familiar, this section provides a refresher on the most important ones.
WEF in Relation to Security
Water security: The Sustainable Water Partnership program, part of the GlobalWaters.org knowledge platform, defines water security as “the adaptive capacity to safeguard the sustainable availability of, access to, and safe use of an adequate, reliable and resilient quantity and quality of water for health, livelihoods, ecosystems and productive economies” (Sustainable Water Program [SWP] & United States Agency for International Development [USAID], 2021).
Energy security: Energy security refers to “the uninterrupted availability of energy sources at an affordable price…Long-term energy security mainly deals with timely investments to supply energy in line with economic developments and environmental needs; short-term energy security focuses on the ability of the energy system to react promptly to sudden changes in the supply-demand balance” (International Energy Agency, 2023).
Food security: According to the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO; 2018), “Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food which meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.” The second of the United Nations’ (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (2023), all of which are part of the UN agenda for 2030, aims to “end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture.” Between 2019 and 2030, an estimated 12% more food will need to be produced to feed the world’s growing population, although countries within sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia will have the most significant need for increased production due to higher population growth (FAO, 2017). This will strain the water and energy resources needed to produce that food.
Energy is an essential part of food security, mainly in terms of the natural resource that is water. The World Bank and the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) have contributed to knowledge about this intimate connection among water, energy, and food security, stating that water is an essential input for irrigated agriculture and that irrigated agriculture is twice as productive as rainfed agriculture. Energy is required to move that water to where it is needed in agriculture. The World Bank has found that irrigated agriculture represents 20% of the total cultivated land and contributes 40% of the total food produced worldwide. How efficiently water and energy inputs are used influences the degree of food security that will be achieved in the short and longer term. Indiscriminate use will lead to shortages and higher costs (Giordano et al, 2017; World Bank, 2022a).
WEF in Relation to Sustainability
Water sustainability: The Sustainable Water Partnership (SWP) program, part of the GlobalWaters.org knowledge platform, defines water security as “the adaptive capacity to safeguard the sustainable availability of, access to, and safe use of an adequate, reliable and resilient quantity and quality of water for health, livelihoods, ecosystems and productive economies” (SWP & USAID, 2021).
Energy sustainability: Sustainable energy is energy that is derived from resources that can maintain current operations without compromising the energy needs or climate of future generations. The energy must also be efficiently distributed to be categorized as sustainable. Often the sustainable use of that energy is considered to be critical. The most common sources of sustainable energy, which include wind, geothermal, marine, solar, and hydropower energy, are also renewable (Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, n.d.a.; Owen & Giarniati, 2016).
Food sustainability: Food sustainability is about generating food at a productivity level that is sufficient to maintain the human population. Sustainable food production is based on the availability of fertile land, water, nutrients, and an adequate climate. It is also based on the careful use of resources like water, energy, soil, pesticides, and fertilizer so that food production can be sustained over time and food waste is reduced (Morawicki & Díaz González, 2018).
Since energy is required to treat and transport water, which is used primarily to produce food, the sustainable use of water and of energy affects overall sustainability (e.g., how sustainable a food is).
WEF in Relation to Equity
Water equity: Water equity refers to broad-based access to community water supply systems for safe drinking water and the household water supply with payment based on income and a use structure. In agriculture, ensuring equal and timely access to water that of sufficient quality and quantity for irrigation of food crops and with a fair rate structure is essential to ensuring water equity (Kyl Center, 2021; World Bank, 2022b).
Energy equity: Energy equity refers to the broad-based benefits of energy production for historically disadvantaged populations; energy production and distribution that benefits those located near the energy production sites; fair representation on energy source decision-making; and energy production that takes into account the current needs of a broad-based group while also considering the effects of that energy on the planet to ensure as few negative effects as possible on future generations (American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, 2023).
Food equity: Food equity includes both the production and distribution of food. Production aspects include access to land, agricultural input subsidies, and capital. They also include protection from food production-related environmental contamination like air and water pollution and pesticide contamination. For people producing food, from farmers to restaurant workers and supermarket employees, it includes fair wages and working conditions. In terms of food distribution, equity includes sufficient access to healthy food options for people of all social classes and geographical locations and the marketing of healthy food in all locations (UC Irvine Law Review, 2017).
Introduction
The water–energy–food (WEF) nexus is an approach utilized by researchers as well as nonprofit, business, and governmental organizations to help reveal the interconnections and interdependencies among water, energy, and food with the aim of informing policy formulation and program development. The WEF nexus also helps to achieve policy synergies among sectors that historically have been treated separately (Brouwer, 2022). The use of the word “nexus” means that what affects one resource affects other resources so that when a change in one occurs, all experience change. Thus, pressures on one resource such water will also affect energy and food. This conceptual approach was developed to improve the understanding of physical resources but has gradually been broadened to include socioeconomic, policy, and governance issues. This is due to the increased use of WEF nexus analysis to achieve equity and sustainability. For instance, studies often use the WEF nexus to understand water, energy, and food security; these studies increasingly reveal that achieving security is impossible without improving equity and sustainability (e.g., economic, social, and environmental) issues within this nexus.
More recently, literature has reviewed methodologies that can be used to help integrate a WEF perspective into research and policy (Albrecht et al., 2018; Kurian, 2017; Yung et al., 2019). There is also specific literature on integrating WEF into research and policy for Latin America and the Caribbean (Mahlknecht et al., 2020; Santos Da Silva, 2019); on South and East Asia (Buechler et al., 2016; Nepal et al., 2021; Mukherji, 2022); the Middle East (Zarei, 2020); Africa (Botai et al., 2021; Jacobson & Pekarcik, 2022); and Europe (Voelker et al., 2022). Recent literature has applied the WEF nexus to the study of topics such as urban agriculture and food waste recycling (Arthur et al., 2019; Carvalho et al., 2022). When studying WEF nexus issues, it is important to examine different social groups’ experiences. Gender and other intersecting characteristics such as social class, caste, ethnicity, race, and urban versus rural location and other geographical issues shape WEF nexus experiences and outcomes. A small but important segment of the literature on WEF examines gender issues (see, for example, Bruns et al., 2022; Buechler et al., 2020, 2021; Villamor et al., 2020).
As an introduction to the WEF nexus approach, see this short video by the FEMSA Foundation titled “Water–Energy–Food Nexus.” For an overview of sustainability issues in the WEF nexus, see Global Water System Project’s “Sustainability in the Water–Energy–Food Nexus.” On the role of renewable energy in the WEF Nexus, see the International Renewable Energy Agency’s “Renewable Energy for Adaptation: A Water–Energy–Food Nexus Perspective.” For an example of a livestock (guinea pig) project in San Pedro de Casta, Peru, that used a WEF approach, see the Nexus Regional Dialogues Programme’s Aquafondo video.
As an introduction to how gender shapes lived experiences within the WEF nexus, read this research website on women and solar energy in rural Niger, Africa, and watch the video associated with it. For South Asia, listen to this talk on women and hydropower projects in rural India, South Asia, that Stephanie Buechler gave at Virginia Tech University’s Women and Gender in International Development program, and this short video on India, Nepal, and Bangladesh.
Consider reading this website on a WEF and gender project in Nepal as well.
The WEF Nexus Framework
The WEF nexus (Figure 1) is an approach utilized by researchers to help reveal interconnections and interdependencies among water, energy, and food with the aim of informing policy formulation and program development related to security, equity, sustainability, and other considerations.
Source: International Water Association. (2018). Sustainable development: The water, energy, food network.
Examining water, energy, and food as they relate to each other helps uncover issues that otherwise go undetected. For example, agriculture in many regions of the world, especially semi-arid areas, relies on groundwater for irrigation. In India, groundwater resources are critical for agriculture due to the uneven precipitation throughout the year (with rainfall occurring mainly during the monsoon season) and between years. Pumping too much groundwater can lead to groundwater depletion and the need to deepen wells which in turn requires more energy to pump the water to the surface for use in irrigation. Twenty-five percent of climate change-inducing greenhouse gas emissions in India are from irrigation; that is, emissions from pumping groundwater (International Water Management Institute [IWMI], 2022). Solar pumps have been introduced in Gujarat, India, with the goal of reducing emissions, especially from diesel pumps, while allowing for groundwater pumping that makes agricultural production possible in this and other semi-arid areas (Topsun Energy Limited, n.d.; DiscoverAgriculture.com, 2021). The government has provided subsidies to offset the costs of these solar pumps. However, women as well as other groups such as small farmers (some of whom are women) who are doing a significant share of the farming in India are not obtaining these subsidies on an equal basis with groups such as larger farmers and male farmers. This is partly because some are unaware of these subsidies (IWMI, 2022). The WEF nexus shows how tightly these elements are connected and how changes in one resource can create changes in other resources. These changes are caused in large part by climate change (Walton, 2022). When examined from the perspective of equity, the WEF nexus can also reveal vulnerabilities within the nexus and points of possible policy or program intervention, preferably with policy coherence created within the WEF nexus. We now take a more in-depth look at WEF connections and gender issues in those linkages by exploring studies conducted in two diverse geographical regions.
Case Studies
The Southwestern United States
Communities in the southwestern United States have WEF experiences that can be valuable for peoples living in other semi-arid areas globally. In the southwestern United States, the states of Arizona and New Mexico obtain the most rain from a seasonal wind pattern called the North American monsoon (NAMS), which brings moisture from the Pacific Ocean (western Texas, southern Colorado, Utah, Nevada, and occasionally southern California may also experience monsoonal weather). NAMS brings rains during concentrated times of year (in late June–September). Winter rains occur during a short period of time in December–February). This concentration of rainfall, combined with long periods of no rain, an annual rainfall average of only about 11.7 inches (299.7 mm), and summer (June–mid September) temperatures above 100 ◦F (37.8 ◦C), reaching 109.4 ◦F (43 ◦C), makes irrigation of crops essential for agriculture. Buechler and Martínez Molina (2020, 2021) examined a city and a rural town in Arizona from 2017 to 2020. As one of the states with the greatest number of sunny days per year, Arizona has high renewable energy potential and is making strides towards a less carbon-intensive energy system.
Buechler and Martínez Molina applied gender and WEF nexus analysis to examine individuals’ and grassroots groups’ use of renewable energy, particularly solar energy, to meet urban or rural agriculture-related needs, especially those related to water for crops and livestock. The research sites were the metropolitan area of Tucson, Arizona (2020 population of 982,000), and a very small rural community 1.5 hours away, Cascabel (2020 population of 5,100; Macrotrends, 2023; places.us.com, 2023). The case study on Cascabel focuses on the interplay among gender, climate change, and renewable energy.
In particular, the study revealed that individuals who practiced agriculture modified their own energy use to adapt and become more resilient to climate change over time and organizations undertook this process to better meet the food security needs of the low-income people they served. In rural Cascabel, ranching undertaken by men and women exists side by side with smaller-scale agriculture that enhances household food security and is practiced primarily by women in kitchen gardens and a community garden. The community garden is managed by a grassroots organization and is off grid (i.e., not connected to the electrical grid). The whole 3/5 acre (0.24 hectare) is communally farmed by women (who comprise the majority of members) and men (two of whom have advanced technical expertise on solar energy and irrigation). The food produced by the community garden enhances access to healthy vegetables and herbs for the middle- to low-income gardeners. For ranching, farmers utilize windmills to pump water into cattle ponds and solar irrigation pumps for the irrigation of fodder crops. For kitchen gardens and the community garden, solar panels provide energy for pumping water for irrigation, running fans in greenhouses, and an electrified fence (around the community garden) to keep wildlife away from crops. Water for agriculture and household use in Cascabel is obtained from wells; that is, groundwater. Due to increasingly high climate change-induced temperatures, crops need more water to survive. Groundwater table levels have dropped in the area, necessitating the deepening of wells. With water available now only at greater depths, more energy is required to pump the water to the surface for use in agriculture. Thus, solar pumps are becoming more popular among locals as a way to reduce energy costs (Buechler and Martínez Molina, 2021).
As Lázaro et al. (2022) have argued, a WEF nexus approach can stimulate innovation by connecting sectors that historically have been addressed separately. Farmers in Cascabel made WEF nexus-related changes over time to manage multiple climate change impacts. The spaces they inhabit in this farming community vary by gender. Thus, to examine communities’ WEF nexus-related responses to the dynamic process of climate change and gain a better understanding of who is leading particular innovations, it is necessary to use a gender lens.. In the larger expanses of land of the cattle ranches, men spend more time working than women, whereas in kitchen gardens women predominate in terms of time allocated and decision-making. In the community garden both women and men are active gardeners, although women outnumber men. When a local rancher in Cascabel sold part of his significant landholdings for a large-scale solar and wind park to supply energy to the city of Tucson, he was offered a powerful solar pump to sweeten the deal. He used it to lower the energy costs of pumping water from ever-deeper depths. Increasing temperatures meant that during the 2017–2020 study period, women in kitchen gardens innovated by adding more solar panels to their greenhouses to run additional fans for improved cooling (Figure 2). Women and men in the community garden in Cascabel worked together to install a solar pump with double the capacity of the older pump but that could be run with the same four solar panels. They also built a greenhouse to better protect seedlings from ever-harsher elements. Cascabel gardeners had to fundraise to purchase the new solar technologies and the kit for the greenhouse for the community garden (Buechler & Martínez Molina, 2021). There are fewer subsidies and programs in this rural area than in the city of Tucson, Arizona, to enable organizations to access water, renewable energy,
and agriculture-related technologies and infrastructure. Many rural locations face such obstacles to providing these to their lower-income populations. Rural Cascabel residents pay more than urban residents for solar installers and receive less compensation than urban residents per kilowatt hour (KWh) of energy produced by their solar panels if they are connected to the electricity grid. Policies and programs should be oriented towards offering rural residents the same incentives as urban residents to access technologies that facilitate the use of more environmentally sustainable, inexpensive energy to acquire water for irrigation and that make residents better equipped to withstand climate change impacts on their kitchen gardens, ranches, and community gardens. Extension education that provides rural residents with knowledge about how to access and use these technologies in a manner that prioritizes sustainable resource use should also be provided. It will be critical to orient the policies and programs to those who predominate in each agricultural space; an understanding of gendered divisions of labor will help accomplish this. Such WEF nexus-related policies and programs will ultimately help achieve greater local food security, equity, and environmental, economic, and social sustainability.
Northeastern India
Buechler et al. (2016) conducted a study of rural communities in the Bhilangana river basin in the Himalayan state of Uttarakhand, northeastern India, and the newer types of hydropower projects located there. They applied WEF nexus analysis with a social justice perspective to examine the effects of these projects on women and men farmers. They identified strategies that can safeguard or enhance the livelihoods of women, youth, and men in areas with hydropower projects while also maintaining critical ecosystem services.
Run-of-the-river hydropower projects are being developed in Uttarakhand to avoid some of the costs large dams have imposed on local communities, such as the flooding of large areas of land that necessitate the relocation of entire villages. Large dams release methane gas, an even more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Run-of-the-river hydropower projects are used to supply the growing cities in the region with greener energy in India’s transition from not only methane-emitting dams but also coal power plants that negatively impact air quality and emit carbon dioxide, contributing to global environmental change. These run-of-the-river projects entail diverting water from a river at a higher altitude into constructed infrastructure consisting of a channel, pipeline, or pressurized pipeline (penstock) and then allowing the water to drop down to a lower elevation through the pipeline and to a powerhouse to create energy. The water is then released downstream of the powerhouse that contains micro turbines (Figure 3).
There are, however, negative impacts of these run-of-the-river projects on local communities. Farmers with land located near and downstream of river water diversion for hydropower lose access to water that they need for crop irrigation. Fodder grass and trees and shrubs for cookstove kindling also do not flourish without sufficient river water since rainfall is concentrated mainly in the monsoon period (July–August). Due to high male out-migration to cities for work, women, and to a lesser extent youth and the elderly, farm the land and raise livestock. The diversion of river water for hydropower also disrupts aquatic populations such as local fish, which serve as a source of protein for local inhabitants. There are also gender dynamics as fishers are mainly men. Buechler et al. (2016) heard reports of springs where women and youth collect water that are drying up due to the hydrological connection between surface (river) water and groundwater. Women and youth in those areas must travel farther to collect water than they did before the hydropower project was built.
Source: Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. (2023b). Types of hydropower plants.
Programs and policies to address these inequities that lead to negative impacts on food security have been developed in some areas in the region. In the neighboring country of Nepal, rural communities where run-of-the-river hydropower projects are located have been incorporated into benefits-sharing programs where the residents receive a percentage of the profits made on the sale of the energy generated by the project. Other Nepali communities have received funds for community centers, schools, roads, and health centers (Shrestha et al., 2016). Fish ladders that allow fish to swim around the area from which water is diverted have been put into place (Climate Technology and Centre Network, 2023). Elsewhere worldwide, local populations have received energy supplied to them at a subsidized rate or for free for a predetermined time (Wang, 2012).
Hydropower projects, as with other energy projects, are often constructed in rural areas with the purpose of supplying energy to urban areas. These projects incur some negative effects for nearby rural populations; the impacts are experienced differently according to demographic factors such as gender, age and geographical location. Policies and programs aimed at addressing these negative impacts and providing compensation to affected communities, with particular attention to each social group’s needs, would facilitate outcomes that achieve greater WEF nexus-related security, equity, and sustainability.
Conclusion
The WEF nexus helps reveal critical connections that can inform improved policymaking and program development for greater security, sustainability, and equity. The sustainable and equitable use and distribution of water, energy, and food shapes overall outcomes in various agriculture-related production processes. For example, the sustainable use of water and the sustainable production and use of energy for crop irrigation help to ensure food security by ensuring that sufficient resources are available for future food production and that sensitive ecosystems are not harmed. Ensuring equitable access to water and water abstraction technologies such as pumps fueled by sustainable energy sources can help ensure equitable food access. Gender, age, social class, and geographical location (e.g., rural versus urban) influence an individual’s position within the WEF nexus. Targeted policies and programs can improve equity as well as security and sustainability outcomes within dynamic WEF interactions.
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