Climate Change Aggravates the Energy-Water-Food Nexus

Abstract

There are regions in the world experiencing the energy-food-water nexus problems. These regions tend to have high population density, economy that depends on agriculture and climates with lower annual rainfall that may have been adversely affected by climate change. A case in point is the river basin of the Indus. The Indus River is a large and important river running through four countries in East Asia and South Asia: China, India, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. The region is highly dependent on water for both food and energy. The interlinkage of these three components is the cause for the energy-water-food nexus. The difficulty in effectively managing the use of these resources is their very interdependence. For instance, water availability and policies may influence food production, which is governed by agricultural policies, which will further affect energy production from both water and biofuel sources, which will in turn require the usage of water. The situation is further complicated when climate change is taken into account. On the surface, an increase in temperatures would be devastating during the dry season for a region that uses up to 70% of the total land for agriculture. There are predictions that crop production in the region would decrease; the Threedegreeswarmer organization estimated that crop production in the region could decrease by up to 30% come 2050. Unfortunately, the suspected effects of climate change are more than just changes in temperature, precipitation, monsoon patterns, and drought frequencies. A huge concern is the accelerating melting of glaciers in the Himalayas. Some models predict that a global increase in temperature of just 1°C can decrease glacial volume by 50%. The loss of meltwaters from the Himalayan glaciers during the dry season will be crippling for the Indus River and Valley. In a region where up to 90% of accessible water is used for agriculture, there will be an increased strain on food supply. This will further deteriorate the current situation in the region, where almost half of the world’s hungry and undernourished people reside. While the use of hydropower to generate electricity is already many times lower than the potential use, future scarcity of water will limit the potential ability of hydropower to supply energy to people who already experience less than 50% access to electricity. In the current work, suggestions have been put forward to save the increased glacier melt for current and future use where necessary, improve electricity generation efficiency, use sea water for Rankine power cycle cooling and combined cycle cooling, and increase use desalination for drinking water. Energy conservation practices should also be practiced. All of these suggestions must be considered to address the rising issues in the energy-water-food nexus.

Perspectives on integrated water resource management and its relevance in understanding the water-energy-climate change nexus in South Africa

“…Nkhonjera (2017) suggested that this region's lagging behind on climate change and its influential role on other sectors such as water and energy is attributed to uncertainties in climate and hydrological modelling, lack of financial resources and political will to develop and implement policy, particularly in developing regions. This raises resistance in recognition of paradigms such as WECC as well as policy development within them and is confirmed by recent studies in the SSA countries of Cameroon, Kenya and South Africa where WE and WEF nexus are still at the centre stage (Platonova and Leone, 2012;Ackom, 2014;Carter and Gulati, 2014;Mabhaudhi et al, 2016;Wakeford, 2017;Yillia, 2019).…”

“…Being one of the epicentres of the national developmental plans, power generation is supplied with 2% of the freshwater available in the country with reliable assurance, second only to the agricultural sector (Eskom, 2012; Department of Water and Sanitation [DWS], 2014). The country is, however, ranked among the top producers of greenhouse gases, largely because of emissions from the power generation sector, specifically the coal-combustion technology (Carter and Gulati, 2014). The upsurge of climate change and influence from other anthropogenic activities such as urbanisation, exert pressure on already constrained water and energy resources.…”

“…Given the threat that shortages of resources are posing to SDGs, it is widely reported that food and energy production are amongst the essential socioeconomic sectors most vulnerable to these constraints (Carter and Gulati, 2014;Carpenter, 2015;Rasul and Sharma, 2016;Mabhaudhi et al, 2016). The extent of this vulnerability is likely to be experienced mainly in countries such as South Africa, where water availability and supply drives both electricity generation and food production, while energy is one of the most critical drivers of water treatment and distribution (Carpenter, 2015;International Energy Agency, 2016;Nhamo et al, 2018).…”