Scenarios Framing the Water-Energy-Food Nexus Challenges in the Mediterranean Area

Abstract

The Euro-Mediterranean Conference on Research and Innovation held in Barcelona in April 2012 recognizes that that there are no alternatives to a deep collaboration between the European Union and its Southern and East Neighbors to cope with their common problems and set a new frame for the cooperation in science and innovation based in the co-design, co-finance and co-ownership of the results of the joint actions. The water-food-energy nexus is a challenge in the Mediterranean area where the effect of climate change and unintended consequences of policies seeking to solve one part of the nexus end up worsening another. A nexus oriented approach meaning integration, inclusion, trans-sectoral vision as well as innovation, which are the basic key to sustainability, is needed to understands the interlinkages and inter-dependencies across water, energy and food sectors through a holistic framework that explicitly defines interactions between systems and the effect one has on another. However, such interactions in the actual frame could be synergetics or antagonistic, and care must be taken to analyze the local circumstances in the handling of the three nexus components before defining possible actions with a nexus vision.