95
Key Points
• Food, energy, and water security implicate four key attributes, including availability; access; utilization; and, stability and reliability.
• A wide array of quantitative and qualitative factors are required to understand
food, energy, and water security and (more generally) human development.
• Development is a general and subjective concept to describe the evolution of
aggregate human well-being.
• Economic metrics such as GDP, GDP and GNI, and the Human Development
Index are useful but limited measures of development.
• The Millennium Development Goals (2000–2015) provided a framework for
mobilizing development efforts in a small number of areas.
• The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (2016–2030) are a much larger
enterprise, including 17 goals, 169 targets, and 243 indicators/metrics. SDG 2
addresses food; SDG 6 addresses water and sanitation; and, SDG 7 addresses
energy. Many other SDGs have essential interlinkages to food, energy, and water.
• SDGs and other goals have implications for FEW Nexus, but exactly in what
manner or magnitude are hard to outline in the current context. Much work still
is needed to identify Nexus connections to goals, develop Nexus-related goals
and benchmarks, and devise strategies and policies.
Discussion Points and Exercises
1. Discuss how the attributes of complex systems such as heterogeneity, interconnections, distributed natural and distributed human controls, hierarchy, emergence, feedback, self-organized criticality, sensitivity to initial conditions,
adaption, and sentience map on to attributes of resource security.
2. Discuss the role of demographics in three countries—one LDC country, one
less developed non-LDC, and one high developed country.
3. Discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the Human Development Index and
suggest an index of your own.
4. Discuss relationships between targets and metrics in SDG 2 (hunger) and SDG
6 (water and sanitation).
5. Discuss relationships between targets and metrics in SDG 2 (hunger) and SDG
7 (energy).
6. Discuss relationships between targets and metrics in SDG 6 (water and sanitation) and SDG 7 (energy).
7. Map the metrics of SDG 2 on to the four attributes of food security. What additional metrics might provide a fuller understanding of food security?
8. Map the metrics of SDG 4 onto the four attributes of water security. What additional metrics might provide a fuller understanding of water security?
9. Map the metrics of SDG 7 onto the four attributes of energy security. What
additional metrics might provide a fuller understanding of energy security?
10. Map the metrics of SDG 6 on to the attributes of a water system. What parts of
a water system are not represented in the indicators?
11. Using the World Bank’s World Development Indicators, graph prevalence of
undernourishment against GDP for countries where data is available (see
3 Development
Key Points
• Food, energy, and water security implicate four key attributes, including availability; access; utilization; and, stability and reliability.
• A wide array of quantitative and qualitative factors are required to understand
food, energy, and water security and (more generally) human development.
• Development is a general and subjective concept to describe the evolution of
aggregate human well-being.
• Economic metrics such as GDP, GDP and GNI, and the Human Development
Index are useful but limited measures of development.
• The Millennium Development Goals (2000–2015) provided a framework for
mobilizing development efforts in a small number of areas.
• The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (2016–2030) are a much larger
enterprise, including 17 goals, 169 targets, and 243 indicators/metrics. SDG 2
addresses food; SDG 6 addresses water and sanitation; and, SDG 7 addresses
energy. Many other SDGs have essential interlinkages to food, energy, and water.
• SDGs and other goals have implications for FEW Nexus, but exactly in what
manner or magnitude are hard to outline in the current context. Much work still
is needed to identify Nexus connections to goals, develop Nexus-related goals
and benchmarks, and devise strategies and policies.
Discussion Points and Exercises
1. Discuss how the attributes of complex systems such as heterogeneity, interconnections, distributed natural and distributed human controls, hierarchy, emergence, feedback, self-organized criticality, sensitivity to initial conditions,
adaption, and sentience map on to attributes of resource security.
2. Discuss the role of demographics in three countries—one LDC country, one
less developed non-LDC, and one high developed country.
3. Discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the Human Development Index and
suggest an index of your own.
4. Discuss relationships between targets and metrics in SDG 2 (hunger) and SDG
6 (water and sanitation).
5. Discuss relationships between targets and metrics in SDG 2 (hunger) and SDG
7 (energy).
6. Discuss relationships between targets and metrics in SDG 6 (water and sanitation) and SDG 7 (energy).
7. Map the metrics of SDG 2 on to the four attributes of food security. What additional metrics might provide a fuller understanding of food security?
8. Map the metrics of SDG 4 onto the four attributes of water security. What additional metrics might provide a fuller understanding of water security?
9. Map the metrics of SDG 7 onto the four attributes of energy security. What
additional metrics might provide a fuller understanding of energy security?
10. Map the metrics of SDG 6 on to the attributes of a water system. What parts of
a water system are not represented in the indicators?
11. Using the World Bank’s World Development Indicators, graph prevalence of
undernourishment against GDP for countries where data is available (see
3 Development