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L. L. Benites-Lazaro et al.
for example on the public supply of water and energy, and on the provision of fresh
and healthy food for large populations in the more urbanized areas.
With water scarcity as the central focus of nexus relations [21], water can be
considered to have an irrefutable complexity, which implies that there are no simplified solutions and no trade-offs to dialogue with nexus components. In Brazil, despite
being a country that is very rich in terms of water resources, contradictorily, there
is a great irregularity in the distribution and demand for water resources in the
immense national territory. Highly complex regions that share an interdependence
on resources, such as the São Paulo Macrometropolis, can attest to the seriousness
of the trade-off relationship and threats to sustainability. In the vast territory of the
state of São Paulo, for example, which is home to more than 30 million inhabitants
in its 180 municipalities, it has been faced with critical scenarios in the public supply
of water, energy, and land availability, especially considering the regional role of the
bioethanol industry [5, 44].
The nexus approach makes it possible to recognize global relationships of scarcity
which in turn are interdependent. Thus, the growing global demand for water, energy,
and food matches situations that transcend geographical scales. In local contexts, for
example, the insufficiency associated with the nexus inevitably concerns extrapolates
territorial limits, given the dynamic way water, energy and food are interrelated
in globalization, for example in the case of the import and export of agricultural
commodities.
The Brazilian government and sugarcane ethanol companies have constructed
national narratives about ethanol production. These narratives invoke a connection
between the environmental benefits of ethanol and its influence on social well-being
with respect to the development of modern technologies for its production. However,
the use of agro-energy has raised fundamental questions pertaining to the impact of
ethanol production, especially with regard to the demand for land and water needed
for the production process and the required guarantee of a continuous supply of food
crops.
In order to understand how the nexus approach has been applied in Brazil,
we used the SNA technique. The data sources were text documents addressing
issues surrounding biofuels, food security, climate change and water crisis, and
were obtained from Brazilian newspapers labeled “MEDIA,” reports from nongovernmental organizations, labeled “NGO,” government websites and documents,
labeled “GOV,” search with keywords in Portuguese language (biocombustíveis,
etanol, segurança-alimentar, mudança climatica, crise hídrica, escacez de água).
We used web scraping technique to freely access webpage such as those of the
government, and NGO. To scrape a website, we developed scripts using R, an opensource programming language and software environment for statistical computing
and graphics. We employed the rvest package to search for HTML code that generates
a webpage. To search for websites in JavaScript, we used the PhantomJS package.
These packages provide an immediate and easy-to-use solution to search for content
generated by free-access web pages. Access to newspapers with copyrights, was
through two Brazilian universities; the data (2007–2016) was provided by the Observatory on Public Policies for Agriculture at the Rural Federal University of Rio de
L. L. Benites-Lazaro et al.
for example on the public supply of water and energy, and on the provision of fresh
and healthy food for large populations in the more urbanized areas.
With water scarcity as the central focus of nexus relations [21], water can be
considered to have an irrefutable complexity, which implies that there are no simplified solutions and no trade-offs to dialogue with nexus components. In Brazil, despite
being a country that is very rich in terms of water resources, contradictorily, there
is a great irregularity in the distribution and demand for water resources in the
immense national territory. Highly complex regions that share an interdependence
on resources, such as the São Paulo Macrometropolis, can attest to the seriousness
of the trade-off relationship and threats to sustainability. In the vast territory of the
state of São Paulo, for example, which is home to more than 30 million inhabitants
in its 180 municipalities, it has been faced with critical scenarios in the public supply
of water, energy, and land availability, especially considering the regional role of the
bioethanol industry [5, 44].
The nexus approach makes it possible to recognize global relationships of scarcity
which in turn are interdependent. Thus, the growing global demand for water, energy,
and food matches situations that transcend geographical scales. In local contexts, for
example, the insufficiency associated with the nexus inevitably concerns extrapolates
territorial limits, given the dynamic way water, energy and food are interrelated
in globalization, for example in the case of the import and export of agricultural
commodities.
The Brazilian government and sugarcane ethanol companies have constructed
national narratives about ethanol production. These narratives invoke a connection
between the environmental benefits of ethanol and its influence on social well-being
with respect to the development of modern technologies for its production. However,
the use of agro-energy has raised fundamental questions pertaining to the impact of
ethanol production, especially with regard to the demand for land and water needed
for the production process and the required guarantee of a continuous supply of food
crops.
In order to understand how the nexus approach has been applied in Brazil,
we used the SNA technique. The data sources were text documents addressing
issues surrounding biofuels, food security, climate change and water crisis, and
were obtained from Brazilian newspapers labeled “MEDIA,” reports from nongovernmental organizations, labeled “NGO,” government websites and documents,
labeled “GOV,” search with keywords in Portuguese language (biocombustíveis,
etanol, segurança-alimentar, mudança climatica, crise hídrica, escacez de água).
We used web scraping technique to freely access webpage such as those of the
government, and NGO. To scrape a website, we developed scripts using R, an opensource programming language and software environment for statistical computing
and graphics. We employed the rvest package to search for HTML code that generates
a webpage. To search for websites in JavaScript, we used the PhantomJS package.
These packages provide an immediate and easy-to-use solution to search for content
generated by free-access web pages. Access to newspapers with copyrights, was
through two Brazilian universities; the data (2007–2016) was provided by the Observatory on Public Policies for Agriculture at the Rural Federal University of Rio de