328
hydroelectric dams do, there are implications for food systems for lowering the cost
of wind turbines.
Research on how societies address the trade-offs between water use for energy,
agriculture, industry, human health and sanitation, and environmental uses is an
example of use-inspired research. The fundamental understanding of why and how
human societies make decisions about the different uses of water is a fundamental
challenge in social science basic research. It is also a topic that has clear applications
to societies striving to develop sustainable water policies at the nexus of food,
energy, and water systems.
Integrating FEW systems to develop near-term solutions requires basic, applied,
and also use-inspired research. This textbook is primarily focused on scholarship in
Pasteur’s quadrant while recognizing the importance of long-term basic research
and near-term applied research.
FEW system nexus studies are an example of use-inspired science. The traditional approach to analysis has been defined by a decision-maker who approaches
the problem from the perspective of a narrowly defined, single subsystem, which is
that decision-makers’ primary concern. For example, if a water perspective is
adopted, then food and energy systems are users of the resource; from a food perspective energy and water are inputs; from an energy perspective, water as well as
bioresources (e.g., biomass in the form of energy crops) are generally an input or
resource requirement, and food and water are both generally the outputs. Food and
water supply, as well as wastewater treatment, require significant amounts of energy.
Of course, areas such as food-as-fuels (i.e., biofuels) tend to blur these descriptions
due to additional impacts associated with land-use, land-use change, and use of the
available biomass resource. However, such tradition single-sector perspectives
inherently underemphasize the fact that these are three highly coupled systems.
Although this primary perspective bias may not be directly addressed through
improved modeling tools, one role that such tools can play is to provide information
to sectoral-based policymakers on the implications of potential choices for other
sectors. These implications are usually easy to translate as food, energy, and water
systems have many characteristics in common.
• All currently leave billions of people without access (quantity and/or quality of
access).
• All have rapidly growing global demand.
• All are constrained by natural resources that are economically recoverable on
Earth.
• All are “global goods” and involve international trade and geopolitics.
• All have strongly differing regional availability and temporal variations in supply
and demand.
• All have strong connections to climate change and the environment.
• All are critical for peoples’ security.
• All operate in heavily regulated markets, although regulation is quite varied and
diverse between market sectors and between societies.
• All require the explicit identification and treatment of risks.
This is all very complicated, highly interdisciplinary, multiscalar, and highly
cross-cutting. No single scientist or decision-maker is able to master the full picture.
M. Carbajales-Dale et al.
hydroelectric dams do, there are implications for food systems for lowering the cost
of wind turbines.
Research on how societies address the trade-offs between water use for energy,
agriculture, industry, human health and sanitation, and environmental uses is an
example of use-inspired research. The fundamental understanding of why and how
human societies make decisions about the different uses of water is a fundamental
challenge in social science basic research. It is also a topic that has clear applications
to societies striving to develop sustainable water policies at the nexus of food,
energy, and water systems.
Integrating FEW systems to develop near-term solutions requires basic, applied,
and also use-inspired research. This textbook is primarily focused on scholarship in
Pasteur’s quadrant while recognizing the importance of long-term basic research
and near-term applied research.
FEW system nexus studies are an example of use-inspired science. The traditional approach to analysis has been defined by a decision-maker who approaches
the problem from the perspective of a narrowly defined, single subsystem, which is
that decision-makers’ primary concern. For example, if a water perspective is
adopted, then food and energy systems are users of the resource; from a food perspective energy and water are inputs; from an energy perspective, water as well as
bioresources (e.g., biomass in the form of energy crops) are generally an input or
resource requirement, and food and water are both generally the outputs. Food and
water supply, as well as wastewater treatment, require significant amounts of energy.
Of course, areas such as food-as-fuels (i.e., biofuels) tend to blur these descriptions
due to additional impacts associated with land-use, land-use change, and use of the
available biomass resource. However, such tradition single-sector perspectives
inherently underemphasize the fact that these are three highly coupled systems.
Although this primary perspective bias may not be directly addressed through
improved modeling tools, one role that such tools can play is to provide information
to sectoral-based policymakers on the implications of potential choices for other
sectors. These implications are usually easy to translate as food, energy, and water
systems have many characteristics in common.
• All currently leave billions of people without access (quantity and/or quality of
access).
• All have rapidly growing global demand.
• All are constrained by natural resources that are economically recoverable on
Earth.
• All are “global goods” and involve international trade and geopolitics.
• All have strongly differing regional availability and temporal variations in supply
and demand.
• All have strong connections to climate change and the environment.
• All are critical for peoples’ security.
• All operate in heavily regulated markets, although regulation is quite varied and
diverse between market sectors and between societies.
• All require the explicit identification and treatment of risks.
This is all very complicated, highly interdisciplinary, multiscalar, and highly
cross-cutting. No single scientist or decision-maker is able to master the full picture.
M. Carbajales-Dale et al.