Water Energy Food: STEPPING UP

越来越多的人同意，目前的水、能源和食品供应系统正处于不可持续的轨道上。政策制定者和决策者担心，过度使用土地、高水平排放、日益加剧的不平等、不健康的饮食、更频繁的极端天气事件和其他挑战，威胁到粮食、能源和水的可获得性和安全，并给经济带来压力。此外，随着削减碳排放的目标和气候变化的影响增加了关于我们的食品、水和能源系统弹性有多大的不确定性，来自行业、政府和公民社会的利益相关者正在寻求支持和帮助，以做出“好”的决策。通常，解决粮食、水或能源部门面临的问题的选择是单独评估的；例如，探索如何满足能源需求，同时忽视对水使用的影响，或设定改变土地使用的目标，忽视对农业、水和能源的连锁反应。这种孤立无援的思维模式无法把握这些系统之间的相互联系，也无法探索在探索一个或另一个问题时明显的好处或权衡。虽然治理结构难以采取更全面的系统观点，但在英国，水、食品和能源系统--水-能源-食品(WEF)--的影响很小，这一点在英国存在着真实的例子。从家庭、社区或小企业，到地方当局、集水区或大公司，这些例子在许多规模上都在运作。尽管任何特定的例子取得成功都有重要的技术原因，但对创新来说，还有许多其他方面的重要原因。这可能是一个不同寻常的购买系统，比如像Gleaning Network这样的在线市场，它为农民和消费者提供了一种绕过传统食品供应网络的方式。这也可能是因为一位鼓舞人心的领导者或团队的承诺。理解什么使创新对世界经济论坛的影响较小是我们项目的第一个目标。第二是找出是否有可能在更大范围内复制低影响世界经济论坛关系的条件，在其他情况下复制它们，或者在更小的规模上更广泛地扩散它们。以这种方式扩大或扩大“良好做法”被认为有可能在影响和资源使用方面带来阶段性变化。我们还将更深入地挖掘可能导致变革的权力结构、行为和其他重要治理组成部分。为了实现我们的目标，我们汇集了一支拥有水、食品和能源领域专业知识、具有物理科学、工程学和社会科学背景的团队。该团队将构建一些案例研究的模型，这些案例研究在世界经济论坛的关系中取得了较低的影响。这些模型不仅将捕捉电力来源或食品供应链等物理属性，还将能够模拟治理、权力和行为如何产生影响。通过考虑随着时间的推移可能发生的变化--例如降雨--该模型不仅将测试一项创新是否可以在另一种规模上运行，而且还将测试它是否在不断变化的条件下运行。收集的数据将涉及与参与我们案例研究的利益相关者以及更广泛的政策和决策者建立牢固的关系。这些利益攸关方将通过讲习班和访谈直接参与研究。他们还将有机会与研究人员合作，建立一种工具，利用建模工作的结果和利益攸关方的意见，在不同的规模上为相关的战略决策提供协助。这项研究将提供一整套强有力的数字和描述性见解，以及一个正式的决策支持工具，研究结果将与学术界以及政府、行业和民间社会受众广泛分享。

More and more people agree that current systems of water, energy and food provision are on an unsustainable course. Policy and decision makers are concerned that overuse of land, high levels of emissions, increasing inequality, unhealthy diets, more frequent extreme weather events and other challenges, threaten food, energy and water availability and security and place pressure on the economy. Moreover, with targets to cut carbon emissions and climate change impacts elevating uncertainty over how resilient our food, water and energy systems are, stakeholders from industry, government, and civil society, are looking for support and help to make 'good' decisions. Typically, options for solving problems facing the food, water or energy sectors are assessed in isolation; e.g. exploring how to meet energy needs, whilst overlooking the implications for water use, or setting targets to change land-use, ignoring knock-on impacts for agriculture, water and energy. This 'siloed' mindset is unable to grasp interconnections between these systems, or explore the benefits or trade-offs apparent when exploring one or another issue. Whilst governance structures struggle to take more of a rounded, systems view, there exist real examples in the UK of low impact across water, food and energy systems - at the 'nexus' of Water-Energy-Food (WEF). These examples can be found operating at many scales - from household, community or small business, up to local authorities, catchment areas or large corporations. Although there are important technical reasons why any particular example succeeds, there are many other things that are important for innovation. It could be an unusual system for buying something, such as online marketplaces like the Gleaning Network, that offers farmers and consumers a way of bypassing conventional food supply networks. It could also be because of an inspirational leader or team of committed people.Understanding what makes innovations have low-impact at the WEF nexus is the first aim of our project. The second is to find out if it is possible to reproduce the conditions for a low-impact WEF nexus at a larger scale, replicate them in other situations, or proliferate them more widely at a smaller scale. Amplifying or multiplying 'good practice' in this way is believed to have the potential to deliver a step-change in terms of impact and resource use. We will also dig deeper into the power structures, behaviours and other important components of governance that can lead to a transformation.To achieve our aims, we bring together a team with expertise across water, food and energy with physical science, engineering and social science backgrounds. This team will build models of a few case studies that have achieved low-impact across the WEF nexus. These models will not only capture physical attributes such as the source of electricity or food supply chain, but also be able to model how governance, power and behaviour have influence. By considering what might change over time - e.g. rainfall - the model will not only test if an innovation can operate at another scale, but also if it works under changing conditions. The data gathered will involve building solid relationships with stakeholders involved with our case studies, as well as a wider set of policy and decision makers. These stakeholders will be involved directly in the research through workshops and interviews. They will also have an opportunity to work with researchers to build a tool that uses both the findings from the modelling exercise and stakeholder views, to provide assistance with strategic decision making of relevance at different scales. The research will deliver a package of robust numerical and descriptive insights alongside a formal decision support tool and findings will be shared widely with academic as well as government, industry and civil society audiences.