Assistant Professor

Department of Home Science

Guru Nanak College

 Sri Muktsar Sahib, Punjab, India 

Abstract

The world is highly affected with the current climatic changes. The challenges thrown by climatic changes have to be met urgently to support the ever increasing demands of population. The population growth has put additional burden on the resources available. Food production, water resource management and energy production needs to be optimized so that the current and future demands of human living can be met with. For sustainable development the food water and energy nexus is required to be studied its synergies to be highlighted and their interconnectedness need to be tapped for meeting the future demands. This chapter dives into the intricacies of the connections between food, water and energy, and also looks into its integrated usage potential to provide workable solutions. The disquiet about sustainable development is also found in its challenges that robust policies frameworks, which promote cross-sectoral collaboration and require high level integrated planning to tap renewable energy food and water simultaneously is required at this hour. The stakeholders range from farmers to energy producers to water managers to the community involved so an array of policy makers and community members is requisite to adopt these sustainable practices and high investments are required to involve sufficient research and technology. There is also grim need to build capacity, infrastructures to drive such progressive change.

Keywords: Sustainable development, climate change, food-energy-water nexus.

The world is highly affected with the current climatic changes. The challenges thrown by climatic changes have to be met urgently to support the ever increasing demands of population. The population growth has put additional burden on the resources available. Food production, water resource management and energy production needs to be optimized so that the current and future demands of human living can be met with. For sustainable development the food water and energy nexus is required to be studied its synergies to be highlighted and their interconnectedness need to be tapped for meeting the future demands. This chapter dives into the intricacies of the connections between food, water and energy, and also looks into its integrated usage potential to provide workable solutions for sustainable development.

Understanding the effect of climate change on sustainable trisect

Sustainable trisect (Figure1) here refers to the interrelatedness of food, water and energy. Climatic changes such as increase in temperatures, alteration of rainfall patterns and extreme weather conditions have a direct impact on available water resources, which in turn, affect agricultural production and power generation. The climatic change acts as a destabilizer in production of food, water and energy.  Drought, flood or snow triggered by climatic change and global warming reduces the crop production including the crops responsible for bio energy production thereby reducing hydro power generation as well as reduction in biofuels like bio-ethanol. The vulnerabilities of food, water and energy affect sustainability. It is very important to address these vulnerabilities proactively to ensure Sustainable development goals.

Figure1 The sustainable trisect showing interdependence of food, water and energy

The need for renewable energy is felt deeply to save climatic deterioration of earth. The global warming issue has lead us to adopt clean energy options like solar energy, wind energy and hydropower instead of fossil fuel energy used traditionally. The production of clean energy also requires use of scarce land and hydro systems to generate fuel crops, setting up of solar power plants and making hydro power projects which involve shift of land under forests to agricultural, affecting its biodiversity and also effects climate in turn. The development of one resource comes on cost of other resource.

Integrating solar and wind power generation to agricultural practices has reduced burden on fossil fuels and made reliant food production systems. UNEP (2020) report has demonstrated the positive impacts of using renewable energy in increasing production and subsequently increasing farmers’ income. The use of solar power irrigation System has enabled farmers to mitigate water scarcity in arid regions like Sub-Sahara Africa and also reduced carbon emissions this have led to increase in crop production in arid regions of India as well. Such integration of renewable energy products to increase opportunities in area of Agricultural and in strengthening the food production systems has a potential to achieve goal no. 2 of zero hunger in sustainable development goals by 2030.

FAO (2020) highlighted the importance of adoption of modern practices of water saving as methods to reduce changes in climate and also shown improvement in food production area. Modern day Technologies like drip irrigation and percision agriculture optimize the usage of water in delivering the water directly to the roots of plants minimizing its wastage and loss to the environment and saving precious surface water resource for other usage. As agriculture is highly water consuming activity and these water resources being scarce need to be wisely used so that food security is ensured as well as water availability for population uses is also sustainably maintained.

Another growing concern is the availability of water both for human consumption as well as for agriculture as climate change has produced severe water scarcity. Also renewable energy technology has been known to play promising role in water related challenges. Hydro power generation is a form of renewable energy which generates energy as well as it also helps to manage the water resources by dam and reservoir management. This water otherwise would have been lost to oceans.  Despite being very useful projects these projects of constructing large dams have also created ecological and social problem does to maintain sustainable growth. There is a dire need to carefully plan and find sustainable practices in water management to fulfil sustainable development goals.  UNESCO (2018) has provided innovative solutions to overcome water scarcity in coastal regions where renewable energy projects are being utilized for desalination of sea water but these projects.

A comprehensive approach in usage of renewable energy is also required at this hour to ensure sustainable development as these resources are hard to produce and involve great cost.  Another apprehension is that the production of renewable energy requires large scale cultivation of bio energy crops,  which means large amount of land is required to grow these energy crops, the production of electrical batteries to store renewable energy too require lithium which involves large scale mining activities to be conducted and this land usage lead to further deforestation and biodiversity loss compromising both food security as well as the ecosystem services, thus could also be a threat to sustainable development.  Approach towards completing demand and as well as usage of resources is the major concern of sustainable land management strategy. (Heck et. al., 2018) 

These challenges have been addressed in usage of Agro voltaic cells which have involved the co-location Technology in placing solar panels and combining their effect with agriculture activities.  Such innovative practices have optimized the land usage, reduced the water consumption involving shady regions in fields and overall resource efficiency issues have been met. 

Key recommendations

To achieve the goals of sustainable development, it is recommended that all the three resources that is the food, water and the energy are considered as a whole. A harmony in development as well as conservation of nature shall be reflected in planning policies. A few recommendations are listed below

1. Efficiency and Innovation in Resource allotment

Reduction in usage and replenishment of limited resource through efficient use is ominous need to innovate and adopt policies such as drip and precision irrigation, which can reduce wastage of water used in agriculture activities and also usage of renewable energy resources to the maximum thereby minimizing the environmental brunt caused by conventional energy systems.

2. Replenish what you use to create a circular economy

The concept of circular economy is central to the pursuit of sustainability. The agricultural waste can be transformed to clean energy by producing biogas.  Recycling the waste water from households has potential to lower the demand of freshwater and energy. 

3. Scheduling water and energy in synchronized way 

As the water and energy are interlinked they shall be a strategically planned in synchronized way. These can be relocated to create such an infrastructure, where water and energy both are optimally created and used. Integrated water treatment facilities can be clubbed to have solar panels that sharing among the production and utilization of resources.

4. Using ancient wisdom to introduce climate based agriculture

Ancient knowledge systems contain climate resilient agriculture practices which ensured food security as well as provided best nourishment for generations to stay alive.  Such practices were inherent in our traditional system like crop rotation, agro-forestry and adopting drought resistant crops. Reviving the ancient systems and improving the as per modern requirements is recommended.

5. Creating Awareness

The only way to change the behavior is to educate, creating awareness is crucial to reduce the water and energy footprint and making informed choices for food consumption and energy usage.

Disquiet about sustainable development also found in its challenges that robust policies frameworks, which promote cross-sectoral collaboration and require high level integrated planning to tap renewable energy food and water simultaneously is required at this hour. The stakeholders range from farmers to energy producers to water managers to the community involved so and an array of policy makers and community members is requisite to adopt these sustainable practices and high investments are required to involve sufficient research and technology. There is also grim need to build capacity, infrastructures to drive such progressive change. Moreover, one Nation cannot implement all the resource changes at once. International Corporation as well as deep knowledge sharing among the nations be able to foster Innovation and accelerate the integrated solution implementation in developed as well as developing countries. Thereby we can conclude that there is an urgent need of adopting holistic approach towards sustainable development in field of energy food and water management. There is call for deep understanding of interactions of energy food and water to meet the unprecedented challenges of climate change and population growth. All these resources have to be managed in such a way that there is harmony between environment, energy, and food and water production management system, which is a mammoth task for policy makers, and it also requires a transformative change in existing sectors.

References

1. Renewable Energy in the Water, Energy and Food Nexus. United Nations Environment Programme.(2020) The water energy and food Nexus:  a new approach in support of food security and sustainable agriculture.  Food and Agriculture Organisation of United Nations 2014.

2. UNEP. (2020). "Renewable Energy in the Water, Energy and Food Nexus." United Nations Environment Programme.

3. UNESCO. (2018). "World Water Development Report 2018: Nature-Based Solutions for Water." United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.

4. FAO. (2020). "Coping with Water Scarcity: An Action Framework for Agriculture and Food Security." Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

5. Heck, V., Gerten, D., Lucht, W., & Popp, A. (2018). "Biomass-based negative emissions difficult to reconcile with planetary boundaries." Nature Climate Change, 8(2), 151-155.