An urban systems framework to assess the trans-boundary food-energy-water nexus: implementation in Delhi, India

Abstract

This paper develops a generalizable systems framework to analyze the food-energy-water (FEW) nexus from an urban systems perspective, connecting in-and trans-boundary interactions, quantifying multiple environmental impacts of community-wide FEW provisioning to cities, and visualizing FEW supply-chain risks posed to cities by the environment. Delhi's community-wide food demand includes household consumption by socio-economic-strata, visitors-and industrial food-use. This demand depends 90%, 76%, and 86% on trans-boundary supply of FEW, respectively. Supply chain data reveal unique features of trans-boundary FEW production regions (e.g. irrigation-electricity needs and GHG intensities of power-plants), yielding supply chaininformed coupled energy-water-GHG footprints of FEW provisioning to Delhi. Agri-food supply contributes to both GHG (19%) and water-footprints (72%-82%) of Delhi's FEW provisioning, with milk, rice and wheat dominating these footprints. Analysis of FEW interactions within Delhi found >75% in-boundary water-use for food is for urban agriculture and >76% in-boundary energy-use for food is from cooking fuels. Food waste-to-energy and energy-intensity of commercial and industrial food preparation are key data gaps. Visualizing supply chains shows >75% of water embodied in Delhi's FEW supply is extracted from locations over-drafting ground water. These baseline data enable evaluation of future urban FEW scenarios, comparing impacts of demand shifts, production shifts, and emerging technologies and policies, within and outside of cities.

Diets, Food Miles, and Environmental Sustainability of Urban Food Systems: Analysis of Nine Indian Cities

“…Recent work of Ramaswami et al (2017) has largely overcome these challenges, linking disparate data sources through a systems framework to explore multiple environmental outcomes for the city of Delhi, India. Building upon this framework, the work of this paper expands beyond a single city to analyze the distinct food systems of nine Indian cities.…”

“…Analysis of community-wide food flows includes quantification of residential, commercial, and industrial use Ramaswami et al, 2017). Residential use is defined as the annual quantity of food demanded by residents within the city for at-home consumption.…”

“…We further designate GHG emissions as either first or second order. These emissions are informed by supply chain data to account for regional variation of on-farm energy use for irrigation (Central Electricity Authority, 2011; Nielsen, 2013) as described by Ramaswami et al (2017). We expand the analysis to include location-specific second-order GHG intensity factors of energy for irrigation.…”

“…We expand the analysis to include location-specific second-order GHG intensity factors of energy for irrigation. These emissions are informed by supply chain data to account for regional variation of on-farm energy use for irrigation (Central Electricity Authority, 2011; Nielsen, 2013) as described by Ramaswami et al (2017). In terms of sensitivity, the calculations for all indicators in the analysis are multiplicative; as such, so is the sensitivity of the results.…”

The nexus between water, energy and food in cities: towards conceptualizing socio-material interconnections

“…Most papers stress the lack of attention to the material connections between water, energy and food and provide new methodologies examining these connections (see e.g., Bazilian et al 2011;Howells et al 2013;Nair et al 2014;Endo et al 2015;Daher and Mohtar 2015;Chen and Chen 2016;Smajgl et al 2016;Tevar et al 2016;Ramaswami et al 2017). For instance, Bazilian et al (2011) analyze the linkages of WEF for the case of ethanol production.…”