The H2020 project DAFNE aimed to investigate how water, energy, food and the environment (WEF nexus) can be managed in complex and transboundary river basins by developing a novel participatory based and multidisciplinary approach to explore, together with stakeholders, options for present and future sustainable and integrated management of water resources. The approach accounts explicitly for technical, socio-economic, and ecologic dimensions, involves public and private actors and is socially inclusive, enhances resource efficiency and preserves ecosystem services in regions where large infrastructures exist, are being built or are planned, and intensive agriculture is expanding.
The novel DAFNE approach to the nexus focuses on better understanding of the interdependence of water, energy, food security and the natural resources that underpin that security. It identifies mutually beneficial options and provides an informed and transparent quantitative framework for determining trade-offs and synergies that meet demand for resources without compromising sustainability.
DAFNE’s central goal was to develop a Decision-Analytic Framework (DAF) that can support the quantitative assessment of the social, economic and environmental impacts of WEF nexus management in complex physical and political contexts, where natural, economic and social processes are strongly linked and multiple stakeholders and decision-makers are present.
The DAFNE approach was demonstrated by applying it to two African transboundary basins, the Zambezi and the Omo-Turkana. The DAFNE approach proved to allow a better understanding of the nexus, thus enabling the exploration of alternative planning and management options based on stakeholder’s cooperation, which foster profitable but equitable resource uses without exceeding environmental limits or creating potential for conflicts.
The main novel and key elements of the DAFNE approach are:
• a comprehensive two-component modelling of the WEF nexus, which enables a spatially and temporally distributed analysis of the impact of development pathways;
• enabling water management and planning solutions based on a robust DAF, which allows the identification of vulnerabilities within and across sectors, so to inform policy making of potential risks;
• methods and tools that facilitate and promote stakeholder long-term engagement, participation and collaboration;
• the generation of more informed decision making through the application of innovative technology-based visualisation and interaction modes;
• improved methods for practical interactions between science and policy, which lead to more effective operational nexus management, and bridge the gap between prescriptive nexus management, adaptive policies and their operational dimension;
• a transparent transfer of knowledge and results to stakeholders and decision-makers;
• broad suitability, transferability and adaptability to any river basin where competing uses among the WEF sectors and/or transboundary water bodies exist.
