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Cervigni, Raffaello; Lidén, Rikard; Neumann, James E.; Strzepek, Kenneth

doi:10.1596/978-1-4648-0466-3_ov

Cited by 9 publications

(11 citation statements)

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“…Within the region, the dominant development paradigm is underpinned by sectors that are highly exposed to climate variability and change, especially agriculture, hydropower, and water infrastructure [ 7 , 8 ]. The sectoral approach has been cited as another obstacle to sustainable development and efficient resource utilisation [ 6 , 9 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Climate Change Adaptation through the Water-Energy-Food Nexus in Southern Africa

Mpandeli

Naidoo

Mabhaudhi

et al. 2018

IJERPH

113

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Climate change is a complex and cross-cutting problem that needs an integrated and transformative systems approach to respond to the challenge. Current sectoral approaches to climate change adaptation initiatives often create imbalances and retard sustainable development. Regional and international literature on climate change adaptation opportunities and challenges applicable to southern Africa from a water-energy-food (WEF) nexus perspective was reviewed. Specifically, this review highlights climate change impacts on water, energy, and food resources in southern Africa, while exploring mitigation and adaptation opportunities. The review further recommends strategies to develop cross-sectoral sustainable measures aimed at building resilient communities. Regional WEF nexus related institutions and legal frameworks were also reviewed to relate the WEF nexus to policy. Southern Africa is witnessing an increased frequency and intensity in climate change-associated extreme weather events, causing water, food, and energy insecurity. A projected reduction of 20% in annual rainfall by 2080 in southern Africa will only increase the regional socio-economic challenges. This is exacerbating regional resource scarcities and vulnerabilities. It will also have direct and indirect impacts on nutrition, human well-being, and health. Reduced agricultural production, lack of access to clean water, sanitation, and clean, sustainable energy are the major areas of concern. The region is already experiencing an upsurge of vector borne diseases (malaria and dengue fever), and water and food-borne diseases (cholera and diarrhoea). What is clear is that climate change impacts are cross-sectoral and multidimensional, and therefore require cross-sectoral mitigation and adaptation approaches. In this regard, a well-coordinated and integrated WEF nexus approach offers opportunities to build resilient systems, harmonise interventions, and mitigate trade-offs and hence improve sustainability. This would be achieved through greater resource mobilisation and coordination, policy convergence across sectors, and targeting nexus points in the landscape. The WEF nexus approach has potential to increase the resilience of marginalised communities in southern Africa by contributing towards attaining the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, and 13).

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Climate Change Adaptation through the Water-Energy-Food Nexus in Southern Africa

Mpandeli

Naidoo

Mabhaudhi

et al. 2018

IJERPH

113

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“…This calls for more thinking around the different energy sources that are available to address development aspirations articulated in Malawi's Vision 2063 document [ 6 ]. Developing countries, like Malawi, are not just locked-in to climate change, but are also often locked-in on development plans based on assumptions of climate stationarity [ 4 , 18 ] among other things. Given future climate uncertainty, development plans require careful evaluation so as to avoid potential lock-in, incorporate flexibility and avoid mal-adaptation.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Nexus sector linkages are strong and changing fast in southern Africa [ 3 ]. Here, current and projected major increases in water demand for hydropower and irrigation expansion underpin regional scale development plans and government and multi-lateral agency aspirations for socio-economic development [ 4 , 5 ]. Malawi's recent ‘Vision 2063’ national development plan relies on similar reasoning and assumptions to focus on agriculture production, energy infrastructure and urbanization as key elements underpinning long-term sustainable development [ 6 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Stress-testing development pathways under a changing climate: water-energy-food security in the lake Malawi-Shire river system

Bhave

Conway

Dessai

et al. 2022

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A.

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Malawi depends on Lake Malawi outflows into the Shire River for its water, energy and food (WEF) security. We explore future WEF security risks under the combined impacts of climate change and ambitious development pathways for water use expansion. We drive a bespoke water resources model developed with stakeholder inputs, with 29 bias-corrected climate model projections, alongside stakeholder elicited development pathways, and examine impacts on stakeholder-elicited WEF sector performance metrics. Using scenario analysis, we stress-test the system, explore uncertainties, assess trade-offs between satisfying WEF metrics, and explore whether planned regulation of outflows could help satisfy metrics. While uncertainty from potential future rainfall change generates a wide range of outcomes (including no lake outflow and higher frequency of major downstream floods), we find that potential irrigation expansion in the Lake Malawi catchments could enhance the risk of very low lake levels and risk to Shire River hydropower and irrigation infrastructure performance. Improved regulation of lake outflows through the upgraded barrage does offer some risk mitigation, but trade-offs emerge between lake level management and downstream WEF sector requirements. These results highlight the need to balance Malawi's socio-economic development ambitions across sectors and within a lake-river system, alongside enhanced climate resilience. This article is part of the theme issue 'Developing resilient energy systems'.

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“…Data about reservoirs’ operational constraints as maximum and minimum release are retrieved from Gandolfi et al [ 98 ], the Zambezi River Authority [ 78 ], and Hidroeléctrica de Cahora Bassa [ 99 ]. The storage initial values of the simulation period are extracted from dams’ operational rule curves [ 100 ]. In order to compute evaporation losses and variable hydraulic head in the external loop evaporation rates are provided by Beilfuss and dos Santos [ 101 ] while reservoirs’ level-storage and surface-storage curves are derived from World Bank [ 102 ].…”

Section: Case Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

Advancing the representation of reservoir hydropower in energy systems modelling: The case of Zambesi River Basin

et al. 2021

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In state-of-the-art energy systems modelling, reservoir hydropower is represented as any other thermal power plant: energy production is constrained by the plant’s installed capacity and a capacity factor calibrated on the energy produced in previous years. Natural water resource variability across different temporal scales and the subsequent filtering effect of water storage mass balances are not accounted for, leading to biased optimal power dispatch strategies. In this work, we aim at introducing a novelty in the field by advancing the representation of reservoir hydropower generation in energy systems modelling by explicitly including the most relevant hydrological constraints, such as time-dependent water availability, hydraulic head, evaporation losses, and cascade releases. This advanced characterization is implemented in an open-source energy modelling framework. The improved model is then demonstrated on the Zambezi River Basin in the South Africa Power Pool. The basin has an estimated hydropower potential of 20,000 megawatts (MW) of which about 5,000 MW has been already developed. Results show a better alignment of electricity production with observed data, with a reduction of estimated hydropower production up to 35% with respect to the baseline Calliope implementation. These improvements are useful to support hydropower management and planning capacity expansion in countries richly endowed with water resource or that are already strongly relying on hydropower for electricity production.

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Overview

Cited by 9 publications

References 0 publications

Climate Change Adaptation through the Water-Energy-Food Nexus in Southern Africa

Climate Change Adaptation through the Water-Energy-Food Nexus in Southern Africa

Stress-testing development pathways under a changing climate: water-energy-food security in the lake Malawi-Shire river system

Advancing the representation of reservoir hydropower in energy systems modelling: The case of Zambesi River Basin

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