27
occurs and overwhelms the system’s protection; for events with high likelihood,
high vulnerability, and high severity, risk is high for a system.
Against this backdrop, studies at the nexus of food, energy, and water systems
seek to understand the integrated system well enough to assess important attributes
such as the following:
• The ability to provide essential food, energy, and water resources over select
scales of time (reliability);
• The capacity to recover from disruptions (resilience);
• The vulnerability of communities to rapid, abrupt, nonlinear, or cascading
changes which “tip” part of the natural world into a new mode of behavior;
• Estimate systemic risk;
• The evolution of stressors on the system that reduces reliability and resilience
over given scales of space and time and function.
Further, studies of FEW systems seek to do the following:
• Identify and develop options for meeting essential needs for food, energy, and
water simultaneously with achieving other decision-maker objectives within a
given context.
• Provide methods, decision-making tools, and technical guidance to guide the
management resolution of conflicts and develop effective policies.
1.5.2 Decision-Making Context
It is critical to understand FEW system solutions are shaped by decision-making
processes that are contextual in two crucial ways—the biophysical environment,
and the socio-economic-political system. There is tremendous variation in geographic factors such as environmental conditions, and the natural resources present
within a system. In addition, time considerations, especially political and economic
timescales, are usually a significant factor influencing different decision-makers.
Further, decision-making occurs within a context of the culture, the social and political and economic structures, the supporting technology, and the motivations and
characteristics of the decision-makers. For example, a farmer has to make annual
decisions about planting crops, a politician may be under a longer re-election time
scale for making decisions, and the ecosystem itself may respond over decades to
changes on the land through a longer “lag” time. Context means that studies of FEW
systems often lead to very different conclusions about how to apply the results in
different places.
Of course, some areas of decision-making provide greater impetus and opportunity for integrated FEW science and governance. For example, when multiple FEW
commodities are acutely scarce, major systemic actions are often contemplated. For
example, water scarcity might lead to careful consideration of the trade-offs in
water use by people directly against that used by agriculture and for cooling power
1 Introduction
occurs and overwhelms the system’s protection; for events with high likelihood,
high vulnerability, and high severity, risk is high for a system.
Against this backdrop, studies at the nexus of food, energy, and water systems
seek to understand the integrated system well enough to assess important attributes
such as the following:
• The ability to provide essential food, energy, and water resources over select
scales of time (reliability);
• The capacity to recover from disruptions (resilience);
• The vulnerability of communities to rapid, abrupt, nonlinear, or cascading
changes which “tip” part of the natural world into a new mode of behavior;
• Estimate systemic risk;
• The evolution of stressors on the system that reduces reliability and resilience
over given scales of space and time and function.
Further, studies of FEW systems seek to do the following:
• Identify and develop options for meeting essential needs for food, energy, and
water simultaneously with achieving other decision-maker objectives within a
given context.
• Provide methods, decision-making tools, and technical guidance to guide the
management resolution of conflicts and develop effective policies.
1.5.2 Decision-Making Context
It is critical to understand FEW system solutions are shaped by decision-making
processes that are contextual in two crucial ways—the biophysical environment,
and the socio-economic-political system. There is tremendous variation in geographic factors such as environmental conditions, and the natural resources present
within a system. In addition, time considerations, especially political and economic
timescales, are usually a significant factor influencing different decision-makers.
Further, decision-making occurs within a context of the culture, the social and political and economic structures, the supporting technology, and the motivations and
characteristics of the decision-makers. For example, a farmer has to make annual
decisions about planting crops, a politician may be under a longer re-election time
scale for making decisions, and the ecosystem itself may respond over decades to
changes on the land through a longer “lag” time. Context means that studies of FEW
systems often lead to very different conclusions about how to apply the results in
different places.
Of course, some areas of decision-making provide greater impetus and opportunity for integrated FEW science and governance. For example, when multiple FEW
commodities are acutely scarce, major systemic actions are often contemplated. For
example, water scarcity might lead to careful consideration of the trade-offs in
water use by people directly against that used by agriculture and for cooling power
1 Introduction