The SEI Initiative on the Water, Energy and Food Nexus

Resource scarcity and climate change pose formidable challenges, and robust evidence-based methodologies built on the nexus framework and applied jointly with stakeholders can be valuable tools in efforts to meet them.

The initiative will apply analytical tools and analysis in a set of case studies to be of real use to decision-makers and managers in the areas of water, energy, food production and ecosystems. The research will be flexible and respond to risks and opportunities, and is structured around three broad themes: governing the nexus, understanding the nexus, and implementing the nexus. These themes will be applied in a set of case studies: as of the date of publication these are in Myanmar, Zambia and Colombia. Importantly, the themes and case studies will inform each other.

Understanding the nexus will build on two decades of SEI’s work developing analytical and planning tools for water and energy that represent key features of energy, water, and food production systems. It will also build on recent efforts to link these tools together in new and innovative ways.

Activities under governing the nexus will draw on SEI’s long experience in environmental governance, including critically examining institutions and proposing alternatives that better contribute to policy coherence and integration in support of sustainable development.

Under the  theme implementing the nexus, we will work closely with stakeholders to identify which policies and institutional arrangements currently work well, as well as feasible options to better manage natural resources and for technical innovation in the allocation of resources and the processes at the interface of water, energy food and ecosystems.

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