Exploring the urban water-energy-food nexus under environmental hazards within the Nile

Abstract

The integrative approach of water, energy, and food nexus (WEF nexus) is now widely accepted to offer better planning, development, and operation of these resources. This study presents a first attempt towards understanding the WEF nexus of urban environments in the Nile River Basin under conditions of hydrological droughts and fluvial floods. A case study was conducted for the capital of Sudan, Khartoum, at the confluence of the White Nile and the Blue Nile for illustration. The results were based on analyses of river flow and water turbidity data, field observations, a printed questionnaire and an interview of farmers practicing irrigated agriculture, and hydropower modelling. The study analyzes indicators for the association of river water resources environment (intra-annual regime, quantity, and quality), the status of urban irrigated agriculture, water treatment for domestic use, and hydropower generation under hydrological extremes, i.e. droughts and fluvial floods. It additionally examines the consequent interactions between the impacts on three sectors. The present study shows how floods and droughts impose impacts on the seasonal river water quality and quantity and, in turn, on the water treatment for domestic use , irrigated agriculture, and hydro-energy supply in an urban environment.The results demonstrate how the two hydrological phenomena determine the state of hydropower generation from dams, i.e. high energy production during floods and vice versa during droughts.Hydropower dams, in turn, could induce cons in the form of low fertile soils in the downstream due to retaining sediment. Finally, present and potential options to minimize the above risks are discussed.This study is hoped to offer a good support for integrated decision making on increased resource efficiency over the urban environment within the Nile Basin.

Cooperative operation of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam reduces Nile riverine floods

“…The flood extent presented in this figure is for Khartoum State only and not all the river reaches impacted by the GERD. Note: GERD, Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam [Color figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com] health services, and public awareness of flood risks (Elagib, Gayoum Saad, Basheer, Rahma, & Gore, 2021;Horn & Elagib, 2018;Mahmood et al, 2017;Mahmoud et al, 2014).…”

Energy-Water-Food-Environment Nexus and Circular Economy: A Systematic Review

“…Moreover, the concept of energy and water nexus was developed to foster a more comprehensive strategy for utilizing natural resources [30], [31]. The majority of the focus has been on discovering potential interactions and trade-offs between the various sectors that could be focused on with enhanced technology and management [30].…”

Emerging Themes and Future Directions of Multi-Sector Nexus Research and Implementation

“…The number of studies on the nexus has grown exponentially since 2011 (Bazilian et al, 2011;Cairns and Krzywoszynska, 2016;Wichelns, 2017;Newell et al, 2019;Opejin et al, 2020) with various definitions of the nexus, covering different sectors, stakeholders and spatio-temporal scales (Siddiqi and Anadon, 2011;Karlberg et al, 2015;Keskinen et al, 2015;King and Jaafar, 2015;Sušnik, 2018;Roggema and Yan, 2019;Wada et al, 2019;Bakhshianlamouki et al, 2020;Imasiku and Ntagwirumugara, 2020;Khan et al, 2020;Benites-Lazaro et al, 2021;Elagib et al, 2021;Lazaro et al, 2021;Wild et al, 2021). The resulting ambiguity of the definition and scope of the nexus has been identified as a key barrier to operationalizing nexus methods in practice (Endo et al, 2017;Weitz et al, 2017;Wichelns, 2017;Albrecht et al, 2018;Urbinatti et al, 2020a;Urbinatti et al, 2020a;Hogeboom et al, 2021).…”