Around one-seventh of the world’s population lacks a secure food supply and has only limited access to clean water, sanitation, or modern energy sources. To tackle this challenge, resources need to be managed and more integrated to avoid over-exploitation and allow more inclusive access for all. The WEFE Nexus provides an innovative framework that captures the interrelationships, synergies, and trade-offs between water, energy, and food in different environmental contexts. This Autumn School will introduce junior scholars to the interdependencies of the Nexus elements at different geographic scales (global, basin, national, and local) with a focus on Africa. At each level, the integration of the nexus elements will be investigated. This program is a collaboration between IDEA League member universities and the following African universities:

• University of Johannesburg
• Addis Ababa University
• Eduardo Mondlane University
• Stellenbosch University
• University of Ghana

The WEFE Nexus School offers students the possibility to gain a comprehensive understanding of the interconnections between water, energy, food, and the environment and to develop new ideas for sustainable solutions. In addition to acquiring theoretical knowledge, a focus is placed on practical solutions and case studies that enable participants to apply their knowledge and foster interdisciplinary collaboration between people from different backgrounds. The WEFE Nexus School brings together students and faculty of European and African universities for a unique learning experience. Students will benefit from the wide range of expertise and diverse perspectives on pressing challenges and emerging solutions. The diversity of case studies allows students to explore the WEFE Nexus in different geographic contexts.

Goals:

• Preparing junior researchers to deal with the scarcity of resources
• Understanding the interrelationships between water, energy, food, and the environment
• Understanding the WEFE challenges and solutions at different geographical levels
• Getting introduced to different tools necessary to deal with WEFE challenges
• Bringing researchers from different backgrounds to foster teamwork for solving multidisciplinary problems

Application Deadline:

Monday, 6th September at 12 pm (Noon) CET

Date(s) of the Event:

• 21 – 22 October 2021 (Module 1)
• 28 – 30 October 2021 (Module 2)
• 04 – 06 November 2021 (Module 3)
• 11 – 12 November 2021 (Module 4)

Detailed information, along with application and registration procedures are available here.

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For detail information on conference, click here.

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Date

March 4, 2021, 15:30-17:00 CET (Brussels); 11:30-13:00 (Brasília, Montevideo, Buenos Aires)

Registration link

Register on Zoom here or livestream via Youtube

Context

“The interactions between food, water, and energy sectors, both now and over the next few decades, are of critical interest to policy-makers, scientists, and society at large. By 2050, the world population is projected to increase to around 9 billion, with the number of people living in urban areas expected to double. These trends in population density and movement, coupled with land-use change and climate variability, will lead to major increases in demand for resources and hold important implications for security and social justice. The reciprocal and dynamic processes of urbanization, including the physical movements of populations, the build-up of city territories, transformation of economic structures, extension of suburban sprawl, and re-urbanization, will result in increasing regional stress on the urban food-water-energy (FWE) system.

To date, we have a limited understanding of the FWE system’s complexity, resilience and thresholds. Investigations of this complex system will produce discoveries that cannot emerge from research on food or water or energy systems alone. An urban FWE nexus approach focuses on intersections and potential synergies between sectors and fields commonly seen apart in business, policy, and research. Thus, the FWE nexus approach can play a pivotal role in fostering sustainable urbanisation, by proposing potential solutions to govern resource interdependencies through comprehensive spatial perspectives and multi-level governance strategies.” (from Midterm Valorization Event: SUGI – Sustainable Urbanisation Global Initiative Food-Water-Energy Nexus)

This webinar is one of a series organized by ENRICH in LAC and JPI Urban Europe on sustainable urbanization. The aim of this workshop series is to facilitate an exchange of knowledge and experiences between some Latin American countries and Europe. The webinar will build upon previously organized events in the series on Positive Energy Districts, organized within the ANPEI 2020 Conference and Urban Living Labs.

Objective

In this Webinar, participants from Europe and Latin America will gain knowledge and understanding of the Food-Water-Energy Nexus, its characteristics, as well as its tool for how to address the city solutions in innovative ways with concrete examples. Belmont Forum will also present its upcoming activities and opportunities. Question and answer sessions will allow participants to clarify their understanding and further elaborate on the topic.

Target Group

Programme managers at funding agencies, city administrators, local public officers, city planners and developers, researchers working on urbanization related areas, civil society, companies, and other stakeholders interested in co-creation processes.

Learning Outcomes

Deepening the understanding of FWE nexus in urban contexts; potential to enhance living standards and contribute to sustainable (urban) development.

Background on JPI Urban Europe/Belmont Forum

SUGI Projects Catalogue

Project: WASTE FEW ULL

WASTE FEW ULL will map and substantially reduce waste in the food-energy-water nexus in cities across three continents: Europe, Africa, and South America.

The aim of the WASTE FEW ULL project is to develop and test internationally applicable methods of identifying inefficiencies in a city-region’s food-energy-water nexus. We will undertake this through an international network of industry/civic society-led Urban Living Labs (ULL) in four urban regions – UK (Bristol), Netherlands (Rotterdam), South Africa (Western Cape) and Brazil (São Paulo). Partners in Norway and the USA will provide economic valuations of potential impact, and impact-led public education, outreach and dissemination.

The Urban Living Labs (ULLs) of stakeholders are organized to:

• map resource flows
• identify critical dysfunctional linear pathways
• agree to the response most appropriate to the local context
• model the market and non-market economic value of each intervention
• engage with decision-makers to close each loop.

The project will contribute with policy decision support models for economically viable waste reduction, rethinking waste as a resource as well as establish entrepreneurship networks in each ULL to continue working after the formal end of the project.

Project: Creating Interfaces

The project “Creating Interfaces” addresses capacity building for the urban food-water-energy (FWE) -nexus, making the FWE-linkages understandable to the stakeholders (city government, science, business, and citizens), and facilitating cooperation and knowledge exchange among them. It will develop and test innovative approaches for local knowledge co-creation and participation through Urban Living Labs and Citizen Science approaches in three mid-sized cities on water: Tulcea (Romania), Wilmington (USA), and Slupsk (Poland). Complemented by previous research and a citizen science toolbox, these labs comprise a user-defined co-creative approach, where research questions, problems, and solutions are decided and implemented with stakeholders themselves.

Webinar Agenda

• Welcome and Introduction by Berna Windischbaur, and Moderator Johannes Riegler
• Introduction to FWE by Jonas Bylund
• Upcoming Belmont Forum Opportunities in FWE by Erica Key
• Project: WASTE FEW ULL by Daniel Black, associates, and Ester Dal Poz
• Project: Creating Interfaces by Pia Laborgne and Joanna Suchomska
• Innovations Challenge Based Approach for National and Regional Solutions by Eng. Flavio Caiafa
• Discussions and questions and answers from the audience including Mentimeter poll by all; moderated by Johannes Riegler
• Summary and farewell by Berna Windischbaur and Johannes Riegler

More information can be found on LinkedIn or on ENRICH Brazil’s website.

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The first webinar training took place on Thursday, 26 March 2020, from 2:00-3:30 PM (EAT) with a focus on the contribution of renewable energy towards the implementation of the Water, Food, and Energy (WEF) Nexus.

If you were unable to attend, the organizers have provided video recording of the event as well as links to all of the presentations, which can be accessed in the link below.

http://theargeo.org/AGCE/elearning/RES4Africa/

For more information, kindly visit the UNEP webpage here and RES4Africa Foundation webpage here.

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Prof. Scott serves as Director of the Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy, Professor of Geography and Development, and Director of the Consortium for Arizona-Mexico Arid Environments – all at the University of Arizona.  He is founding co-director of the AQUASEC Center of Excellence for Water Security. He was a 2018-19 Leshner Fellow of the American Association for Advancement of Science, focusing on water-energy-food security. He earned PhD and MS degrees at Cornell University and BS and BA degrees at Swarthmore College.  His research and engagement are concentrated in the Southwest US, Mexico, and India, as well as Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Peru, and Nepal. He speaks Spanish and Hindi, as well as conversational Portuguese and Nepali.  

Watch Recorded Presentation Here

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Seminar title: “The Water-Energy-Food Nexus: Insights from Global Basin, and Local Case Studies of Growing Natural Resource Scarcity in the Eastern Nile Basin.”

The geography coffee hour title: “Achieving Nutrition Outcomes through Improved Water Management: What are the Options?”

Watch video recording of seminar here >

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FEWSION is an empirical description of the U.S. food, energy, and water system. The FEWSION project is a Big Data Fusion project to create and explore the first mesoscale map of the U.S. food, energy, and water (+everything) system. It is the first complete footprint database for every US city (water, greenhouse gases, etc.) along with vulnerability and resilience benchmarks.

Click here to view recorded webinar

Click here to explore the FEWSION website

Click here to view the FEW-View educational map tool

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