4
1.1 The Structure of This Book
Given the many critical challenges facing society, why select the particular challenges of food, energy, and water for integration? Why not air, land, climate, population, or economics? Why now at the beginning of the twenty-first century? This
chapter sets up the rest of the book by answering this fundamental question.
The reader is asked not to assign any importance to the order of the words “food,”
“energy,” and “water.” This order is used primarily because the resulting acronym
“FEW” is easy to remember. Others prefer the equally valid “WEF.” Any order is
equally valid because the nexus of FEW systems is, by definition, where all three
components and their interactions are all essential to understanding a challenge and
developing solutions.
The integration of FEW systems is necessary because human beings and their
societies require all three all the time, and because each of the three depends on the
others. Food requires water and energy; energy requires water, and (in the case of
biofuels) food; water requires energy (which may require food). Practical challenges such as how human beings adapt to limitations in their access to food,
energy, and water; how they develop policies and laws to ensure and/or restrict
access; how the regulations in each system affect adaptation and access in the other
two systems; how they resolve disagreements; and whether and how they will do
so in a sustainable manner in the future represent some of the underlying motivations for nexus studies. In Chaps. 3–11, we will explore the human demands on
FEW systems and how the critical roles played by ecosystems, infrastructure,
climate change, law and policy, economics, and culture shape the resulting systems and their interactions.
In the second part of this book, Chaps. 12–17, we will explore tools for measuring and modeling integrated food, energy, and water systems individually. We will
address how to ask questions, with spatial and temporal boundaries, that can lead
to results useful to decision-makers in the real world as they respond to the challenges of meeting the needs for food, energy, and water simultaneously, challenges
that are both scientific and human.
While the nexus of food, energy, and water systems is still an emerging field of
study, it is not new. Nearly every chapter in this book includes case studies related
to the focus of that chapter. Chapters 18 and 19 will explore two areas where the
importance of integrating FEW systems has already been recognized by significant
research carried out over several decades—cities and watersheds. Both of these
areas lend themselves to certain spatial boundaries which helps define questions at
the nexus. Work in these contexts has been varied and is responsible for many of the
tools presented in this book. These tools and others have been applied to manage
various types of human conflict at the nexus (Chap. 20).
We conclude this book (Chap. 21) with a brief, but speculative, look into the
future, exploring how advances in the study of the integration of FEW systems
have the potential to foster the development of many solutions to specific
challenges.
P. Saundry and B. L. Ruddell
1.1 The Structure of This Book
Given the many critical challenges facing society, why select the particular challenges of food, energy, and water for integration? Why not air, land, climate, population, or economics? Why now at the beginning of the twenty-first century? This
chapter sets up the rest of the book by answering this fundamental question.
The reader is asked not to assign any importance to the order of the words “food,”
“energy,” and “water.” This order is used primarily because the resulting acronym
“FEW” is easy to remember. Others prefer the equally valid “WEF.” Any order is
equally valid because the nexus of FEW systems is, by definition, where all three
components and their interactions are all essential to understanding a challenge and
developing solutions.
The integration of FEW systems is necessary because human beings and their
societies require all three all the time, and because each of the three depends on the
others. Food requires water and energy; energy requires water, and (in the case of
biofuels) food; water requires energy (which may require food). Practical challenges such as how human beings adapt to limitations in their access to food,
energy, and water; how they develop policies and laws to ensure and/or restrict
access; how the regulations in each system affect adaptation and access in the other
two systems; how they resolve disagreements; and whether and how they will do
so in a sustainable manner in the future represent some of the underlying motivations for nexus studies. In Chaps. 3–11, we will explore the human demands on
FEW systems and how the critical roles played by ecosystems, infrastructure,
climate change, law and policy, economics, and culture shape the resulting systems and their interactions.
In the second part of this book, Chaps. 12–17, we will explore tools for measuring and modeling integrated food, energy, and water systems individually. We will
address how to ask questions, with spatial and temporal boundaries, that can lead
to results useful to decision-makers in the real world as they respond to the challenges of meeting the needs for food, energy, and water simultaneously, challenges
that are both scientific and human.
While the nexus of food, energy, and water systems is still an emerging field of
study, it is not new. Nearly every chapter in this book includes case studies related
to the focus of that chapter. Chapters 18 and 19 will explore two areas where the
importance of integrating FEW systems has already been recognized by significant
research carried out over several decades—cities and watersheds. Both of these
areas lend themselves to certain spatial boundaries which helps define questions at
the nexus. Work in these contexts has been varied and is responsible for many of the
tools presented in this book. These tools and others have been applied to manage
various types of human conflict at the nexus (Chap. 20).
We conclude this book (Chap. 21) with a brief, but speculative, look into the
future, exploring how advances in the study of the integration of FEW systems
have the potential to foster the development of many solutions to specific
challenges.
P. Saundry and B. L. Ruddell