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The Water–Energy–Food Nexus: Toward Integrated Solutions for Sustainability
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The Water–Energy–Food Nexus: Toward Integrated Solutions for Sustainability

A Special Issue of Water (ISSN 2073-4441) belonging to the section "Water-Energy Nexus".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 25 January 2027 | Viewed by 1720

Editors

Prof. Dr. Lijuan Huo

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
School of Environment and Resources, Taiyuan University of Science and Technology, Taiyuan 030024, China
Interests: water–energy–food nexus; soil pollution diffusion; integrated resource manage-ment; irrigation efficiency; environmental sustainability
Dr. Chenglong Zhang

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
College of Water Resources & Civil Engineering, China Agricultural University, Beijing 100083, China
Interests: water–energy–food nexus; sustainability science; agricultural water management; climate resilience; regional resource optimization
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Prof. Dr. Gaiqiang Yang

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
School of Environment and Resources, Taiyuan University of Science and Technology, Taiyuan 030024, China
Interests: water–energy–food nexus; decision support system; water conservation policies; machine learning; food security
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The Water–Energy–Food (WEF) Nexus constitutes a pivotal research domain underpinning global sustainable development, ensuring resource security, and maintaining ecological equilibrium. Through in-depth exploration of the WEF Nexus, the intrinsic synergies and potential trade-offs among water, energy, and food systems can be systematically identified and rigorously analyzed, which further facilitates the formulation of integrated governance strategies to mitigate resource scarcity, cope with climate change, and alleviate environmental pressures. This not only safeguards the stable supply of water, energy, and food resources but also preserves the integrity of the ecological environment. Furthermore, research on the WEF Nexus facilitates the scientific assessment of the sustainability of resource systems, providing evidence-based guidance for rational resource allocation, cross-sectoral coordination, and high-level policy formulation. Against the backdrop of escalating global resource constraints and increasingly complex ecological challenges, interdisciplinary integration and systematic thinking have emerged as indispensable approaches to surmount the inherent limitations of traditional single-sector research. Such approaches can effectively promote the coordinated and sustainable development of water, energy, and food systems, exerting profound practical significance for advancing the achievement of global sustainability objectives.

This Special Issue is interdisciplinary and encourages methodological pluralism. We welcome research-based manuscript submissions from scholars and practitioners working in water resource management, energy science, agricultural science, environmental science, ecological science, and sustainable development policy studies.

Prof. Dr. Lijuan Huo
Dr. Chenglong Zhang
Prof. Dr. Gaiqiang Yang
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Water is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • water–energy–food (WEF) nexus
  • sustainable development
  • integrated resource governance
  • cross-sectoral coordination
  • resource security
  • climate resilience
  • ecological equilibrium
  • machine learning
  • decision support system

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Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

31 pages, 4376 KB  
Article
Scale Measurement of Agricultural Water Transfer from the Perspective of Food Security: Evidence from the Wei River Basin in Henan Province
by Jiahao Li, Xiruo Wang, Shuchang Gu and Lina Zhang
Water 2026, 18(11), 1287; https://doi.org/10.3390/w18111287 - 26 May 2026
Viewed by 523
Abstract
To measure the scale of agricultural water transfer (AWT) from the perspective of food security, this paper establishes an integrated framework for quantifying its actual scale, theoretical transferable scale, and deviation. Based on panel data from 2001 to 2023 of five cities (Anyang, [...] Read more.
To measure the scale of agricultural water transfer (AWT) from the perspective of food security, this paper establishes an integrated framework for quantifying its actual scale, theoretical transferable scale, and deviation. Based on panel data from 2001 to 2023 of five cities (Anyang, Hebi, Xinxiang, Jiaozuo, Puyang) of the Wei River Basin in Henan Province, China, the actual transfer scale is derived by comparing agricultural water right allocations with net crop irrigation requirements calculated via the FAO 56 Penman Monteith formula; the theoretical transferable scale is estimated using a translog production function grounded in factor substitution theory. By contrasting the two scales, deviations and excessive transfer scenarios are identified. The results show that (1) actual AWT occurred in 59.13% of the city–year observations, exhibiting clear phase-based fluctuations, with positive transfer scale ranging from 0.046 to 13.983 × 108 m3. The largest positive transfer occurred in Puyang in 2002, and Puyang, Jiaozuo, and Xinxiang were the main outflow areas. Factor combinations could release transferable water in 45.22% of the city–year observations, wherein pesticide/fertilizer, agricultural machinery, and grain sown area serve as the main substitutes. Theoretical transferable scale ranged from −60.150 to 186.374 × 108 m3, with a mean of 1.718 × 108 m3 and a median of −0.108 × 108 m3, indicating unstable factor-substitution capacity. (2) Excessive transfer was identified when the actual transfer scale was positive and exceeded the theoretical transferable scale. Under this criterion, 47.82% of observations were excessive transfers, 11.33% were reasonable transfers, and 40.85% showed no transfer. Jiaozuo and Puyang were the core excessive transfer areas, each showing excessive transfer in 16 of the 23 years, while Xinxiang has shown a rising trend in recent years; Anyang, by contrast, effectively controls excesses through water saving technologies. The findings highlight the need for dynamic monitoring, city-specific regulation, and advanced water-saving technologies to balance water allocation with food security. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Water–Energy–Food Nexus: Toward Integrated Solutions for Sustainability)
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21 pages, 1163 KB  
Article
Multi-Objective Collaborative Optimization Model and Application of the Water-Energy-Food-Carbon Nexus Under Uncertainty: A Case Study of the Heihe Irrigation Area
by Zehui Yang, Lin Li, Yuxin Su, Lijuan Huo and Gaiqiang Yang
Water 2026, 18(7), 841; https://doi.org/10.3390/w18070841 - 1 Apr 2026
Cited by 8 | Viewed by 818
Abstract
Against the backdrop of intensified climate change and increasingly prominent imbalances in resource supply and demand, achieving multi-objective collaborative optimization of the Water-Energy-Food-Carbon (WEFC) nexus under uncertain conditions has become a pivotal task for regional sustainable development. Taking the Heihe River Basin, a [...] Read more.
Against the backdrop of intensified climate change and increasingly prominent imbalances in resource supply and demand, achieving multi-objective collaborative optimization of the Water-Energy-Food-Carbon (WEFC) nexus under uncertain conditions has become a pivotal task for regional sustainable development. Taking the Heihe River Basin, a typical arid inland river basin in northwest China with a complex WEFC nexus, as the research area, this study develops a multi-objective collaborative optimization model for the WEFC nexus, targeting three core goals: maximizing crop irrigation water productivity, minimizing carbon emissions, and enhancing low-carbon agricultural competitiveness. The model embeds constraints of regional water security, food security, land policy, and total water resource availability, introduces the uncertainty parameter τ to quantify fluctuations in available surface water, and adopts the ideal point method to convert the multi-objective problem into a single-objective optimization task by minimizing the Euclidean distance between feasible solutions and the ideal solution, with a case application in the oasis area of the basin’s middle reaches. Results show the model exhibits excellent stability across varying uncertainty levels: crop irrigation water productivity stabilizes around 1.5 kg/m3, low-carbon agricultural competitiveness at approximately 0.1003 kg/yuan, and spatial differences in resource allocation are evident. Linze gains the most water resources (16.47 × 108 m3) due to geographical advantages, while Gaotai obtains the least (6.51 × 108 m3). In terms of planting structure, vegetables dominate the sown area owing to low carbon emissions and high water use efficiency, while wheat planting is relatively limited by climate adaptability and market demand. Carbon sink analysis confirms vegetables as the primary carbon sequestration contributor in Ganzhou and Linze, offering a practical pathway for agricultural carbon reduction. These findings provide tailored theoretical and practical support for balancing food security, efficient resource utilization, low-carbon development, and ecological protection in arid and semi-arid regions, facilitating regional carbon neutrality and sustainable agricultural development. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Water–Energy–Food Nexus: Toward Integrated Solutions for Sustainability)
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