UNraveling the knoT of the Water-energy-food nexus usIng ecosySTems services

Project Information

UNTWIST

Grant agreement ID: 893103

DOI

10.3030/893103

Project closed

EC signature date 18 March 2020

Start date 1 February 2021

End date 31 January 2023

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Total cost

€ 160 932,48

EU contribution

€ 160 932,48

Coordinated by

ASOCIACION BC3 BASQUE CENTRE FOR CLIMATE CHANGE - KLIMA ALDAKETA IKERGAI
Spain

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - UNTWIST (UNraveling the knoT of the Water-energy-food nexus usIng ecosySTems services)

Reporting period: 2021-02-01 to 2023-01-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Water, energy and food (WEF) are inextricably linked within a complex system (“the Nexus”) dominated by interactions, feedbacks and scales effects. At the same time, WEF security relies on services provided by healthy ecosystems. Accordingly, managing these systems by adopting a system wise approach, rather than a sectoral one, is becoming crucial to ensure, at the same time WEF security and ecosystems health.

The vital need of policy coherence and integrated approaches across traditional development sectors is emphasised by the current EU development policy context (i.e. adoption of the 2030 Agenda and the Paris Agreement on Climate Change) recognizing how the nexus approach could help in addressing some of important EU Societal Challenges (i.e. climate action and environment; food security; secure, clean and efficient energy), supporting the achievement of multiple Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (i.e. SDG 2, 6, 7, 13).

The recognition of interlinked nature of WEF has motivated the development of different theoretical frameworks to assist the understanding of the nexus and related sectors. However, despite recognizing that Ecosystem Services (ESs) represent the foundation of WEF nexus, their consideration in such frameworks is practically lacking. Tackling WEF resources issues cannot prescind by a systemic thinking coupling human and natural systems to deliver integrated solutions. ESs provide a unique framework to operationalize this integration as they represent the critical interactions between nature and human-being and thus permit to reveal synergies and conflicts between environmental and socio-economic goals underpinning the nexus.

Another point that emerged from the analysis of literature on WEF is that most of the frameworks developed are inclined towards theory. While providing an effective qualitative description of nexus components and cause-effect relationships they fall short in quantitatively assess critical interactions occurring between WEF sectors. Integrated models able to accommodate data coming from sectorial models and flexible enough to deal with the uncertainty in future direction of global changes are strongly needed to move WEF nexus appraisal from theory to practice. Despite the use of AI in WEF application is still in its infancy, AI capabilities could result extremely useful to: maximize the use and utility of increasingly available interdisciplinary data repositories and ‘big data’ on WEF; capture characteristic nexus system features and patterns; and assist the characterization and quantification of critical interactions across scales and sectors.

For this end, the overall objective of UNTWIST is to advance the assessment of water energy and food interactions by adopting an Ecosystem Services-based perspective. UNTWIST explored and demonstrated, through a practical case study application, the potential of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in developing integrated and interoperable models supporting the quantification of critical interactions among WEF nexus sectors.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

UNTWIST was conducted via six Work Packages (WPs). Main results achieved by UNTWIST can be summarized as follows:
- Review of the state of knowledge on the integration of ESs in the WEF discourse;
- Development of a theoretical framework permitting, for the first time, to account for the ESs perspective into the nexus theory and so to propose an innovative approach to drive the conceptualization of the interdependencies and trade-offs among WEF sectors.
- Implementation of an integrated semantic based-model developed using the ARIES (Artificial Intelligence for Environment and Sustainability) platform (https://aries.integratedmodelling.org/) to quantify WEF synergies and trade-offs at the local scale;
- Scenarios simulating ESs flows exchanged across the nexus under different social, economic and environmental dynamics;
- A set of maps of “hot-spots” areas for multiple ESs provisions based on different stakeholders perspectives.

The results of UNTWIST have been disseminated at three different European conferences and symposia: i) the Conference on Water-Energy-Food Ecosystems (WEFE) “Nexus scientific advances in the Mediterranean region”, online from Nicosia, Cyprus, 27-29 September 2021; ii) the European Geosciences Union General Assembly 2022, Vienna Austria, 23–27 May 2022; iii) the 4th Ecosystem Services Partnership Europe Conference, Heraklion, Greece, 10-14 October 2022.

Two first author peer-reviewed publications have already been drafted and will be submitted for publication within the first half of 2023 respectively to the Ecosystem Services and the Science of the Total Environment journals. Other two collaborative publications are under development and will be submitted for publication by the end of 2023.

Two customized factsheets summarizing the theoretical and methodological approach applied and the main findings and highlights drawn from case studies have been designed and sent to a total of 20 local actors from different organizations taking part in the project.

A divulgation book for kids entitled “Let’s unravel this knot! A guide for kids (and whoever wants) to dig deeper into the links between water, food and energy” was published adapting the main findings of the project in infographics suitable for a younger audience (8-12 years old). From the book, translated in four different languages (English, Italian, Spanish and Euskera), training materials for primary schools have been elaborated and made available for distribution during scientific divulgation events at schools and freely downloadable from the link: https://untwist.bc3research.org/

Project activities and updates has been promoted through the social media (i.e. Instagram, Twitter) pages of BC3 and ARIES.

All datasets, outputs and the code for the WEF integrated model has been made available for reuse in a bitbucket repository freely accessible by all k.lab users to foster further research.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Results of UNTWIST represented an innovative step forward the “knowledge silos” approach usually adopted in natural resource management. By bridging the knowledge gap between ESs and WEF nexus communities of research and practice supported the achievement of a stronger policy coherence across traditional development sectors as envisioned by the current EU sustainability policy context (i.e. the 2030 Agenda, the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, IPBES nexus assessment).

The use of AI (i.e. semantic) to make interoperable data and model independently developed by different communities and sectors resulted a novel and successful solution to foster integration between disciplines and to maximize the capability of “big data” to solve complex sustainability problem.

At the local level, UNTWIST outputs will be directly usable to inform local stakeholders and the general public about the impacts of specific adaptation and management actions on nexus sustainability. In this sense, scenarios developed in the case study can support the monitoring of the progress toward the achievement of multiple and interconnected SDGs (i.e. SDG 2, 6, 7, 13). The integrated model for WEF interaction quantification developed in the k.lab language being totally accessible and available can be reused and adapted to cover specific issues in other case studies.

A final overarching impact is enhanced public perception of the need of adopting a nexus approach for natural resource management.

UNTWIST logo