Water, energy, food, forest, and biodiversity systems are under extreme pressure from climate change and other anthropogenic activities. There has been a lack of mechanisms to account for the integrated nature of these systems and inadequate knowledge to best retain these forests and biodiversity and assist sustainable irrigation, clean energy, and agro-processing needs. Especially, women, girls, and other marginalized groups face severe consequences from poorly developed water energy and food systems. Therefore, NEXUS Gains aims to foster integrated management of water, energy, food, land, biodiversity, and forests by conducting the following steps:
- co-develop prioritized, scalable water-energy-food-forestbiodiversity (WEFFB) nexus innovations using foresight tools and tradeoff analyses;
- co-generate the evidence and approaches to significantly improve water productivity across scales (farm to watershed to basin) andsectors using a systems lens;
- energize food systems sustainably (water, ecosystems) and inclusively with private sector actors;
- strengthen cross-sectoral, multi-stakeholder governance at community, national and regional levels; and
- develop capacity on Nexus GAINS approaches and strengthen inclusion.