Belmont Forum Collaborative Research Food-Water-Energy Nexus: Food-Energy-Water for Sustainable Urban Environments

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Many cities across the globe are facing difficult challenges managing their food, water and energy systems. The challenges stem from the fact that the issues of food, water and energy are often tightly connected with each other, not only locally but also globally. This is known as the Food-Water-Energy (FWE) nexus. An effective solution to a local water problem may cause new local problems with food or energy, or cause new water problems at the global level. On a local scale, it is difficult to anticipate whether solutions to one issue in the nexus are sustainable across food, water and energy systems, both at the local and the global scale. Innovative solutions that encompass the nexus are particularly important to enable cities to better manage their food, water and energy systems and understand the benefits and tradeoffs for different solutions. This award supports U.S. researchers participating in a project competitively selected by a 29-country initiative through the joint Belmont Forum- Joint Programming Initiative (JPI) Urban Europe. The Sustainable Urbanization Global Initiative (SUGI)/Food-Water-Energy Nexus is a multilateral initiative designed to support research projects that bring together the fragmented research and expertise across the globe to find innovative solutions to the Food-Water-Energy Nexus challenge. The call seeks to develop more resilient, applied urban solutions to benefit a much wider range of stakeholders. The rapid urbanization of the world's population underscores the importance of this focus. International partners were invited to develop solutions for this challenge. The funds requested will be used to support U.S. participants to cooperate in consortia that consist of partners from at least three of the participating countries and that bring together natural scientists, social scientists and research users (e.g., civil society, NGOs, and industry). Participants from other countries are funded through their national funding organizations. The project adopts a systems approach to understand urban food-water-energy systems and quantify the impacts of proposed solutions for monsoonal (Pune, India) and semi-arid regions (Amman, Jordan). Models for each region will be developed to capture connections and feedbacks among users, producers, distribution mechanisms, and resources. Together with a wide range of actors in these cities, the project will develop narratives of future changes in environment, demographics, land use, and economic development, under which the models will be used to develop and evaluate implementable sustainability options. Sustainability Living Labs will aid stakeholders to identify means to overcome impediments to sustainability and resource equity. The project framework is flexible, transferrable, and broadly applicable to the urban-food-water-energy challenges and it is anticipated that this platform will be useful to many geographic regions where adequate models of the food-water-energy system can be developed.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.