Nexus Thinking at River Basin Scale: Food, Water and Welfare
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School of Business and Economics, Universidad del Desarrollo, Concepción 4070001, Chile
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Water Research Center for Agriculture and Mining (CRHIAM), Concepción 4070411, Chile
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Center of Applied Ecology and Sustainability (CAPES), Santiago 7820244, Chile
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School of Agronomy, Faculty of Sciences, Universidad Mayor, Santiago 8320000, Chile
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Center for Climate and Resilience Research, University of Chile, Santiago 8370415, Chile
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Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y Administrativas, Universidad Católica de la Ssma, Concepción 4060002, Chile
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Facultad de Ciencias Ambientales y Centro EULA, Universidad de Concepción, Concepción 4070386, Chile
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Departamento Ingeniería Ambiental, Facultad de Ciencias Ambientales y Centro EULA, Universidad de Con-cepción, Concepción 4070386, Chile
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
†
Doctorado en Ciencias Ambientales, mención sistemas acuáticos continentales.
Academic Editor: Pietro E. Campana
Water 2021, 13(7), 1000; https://doi.org/10.3390/w13071000
Received: 12 January 2021
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Revised: 31 March 2021
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Accepted: 2 April 2021
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Published: 5 April 2021
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Water-Energy-Food Nexus: Sustainable Development)
Water resources face an unparalleled confluence of pressures, with agriculture and urban growth as the most relevant human-related stressors. In this context, methodologies using a Nexus framework seem to be suitable to address these challenges. However, the urban sector has been commonly ignored in the Nexus literature. We propose a Nexus framework approach, considering the economic dimensions of the interdependencies and interconnections among agriculture (food production) and the urban sector as water users within a common basin. Then, we assess the responses of both sectors to climatic and demographic stressors. In this setting, the urban sector is represented through an economic water demand at the household level, from which economic welfare is derived. Our results show that the Nexus components here considered (food, water, and welfare) will be negatively affected under the simulated scenarios. However, when these components are decomposed to their particular elements, we found that the less water-intensive sector—the urban sector—will be better off since food production will leave significant amounts of water available. Moreover, when addressing uncertainty related to climate-induced shocks, we could identify the basin resilience threshold. Our approach shows the compatibilities and divergences between food production and the urban sector under the Nexus framework.
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Keywords:
nexus approach; welfare; hydro-economic model; climate change; trade-off effects
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MDPI and ACS Style
Ponce Oliva, R.D.; Fernández, F.J.; Vasquez-Lavín, F.; Arias Montevechio, E.; Julio, N.; Stehr, A. Nexus Thinking at River Basin Scale: Food, Water and Welfare. Water 2021, 13, 1000. https://doi.org/10.3390/w13071000
AMA Style
Ponce Oliva RD, Fernández FJ, Vasquez-Lavín F, Arias Montevechio E, Julio N, Stehr A. Nexus Thinking at River Basin Scale: Food, Water and Welfare. Water. 2021; 13(7):1000. https://doi.org/10.3390/w13071000
Chicago/Turabian StylePonce Oliva, Roberto D., Francisco J. Fernández, Felipe Vasquez-Lavín, Esteban Arias Montevechio, Natalia Julio, and Alejandra Stehr. 2021. "Nexus Thinking at River Basin Scale: Food, Water and Welfare" Water 13, no. 7: 1000. https://doi.org/10.3390/w13071000
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