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The food-energy-water nexus and urban complexity

Nature Climate Change volume 7, pages 233–235 (2017)Cite this article

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While tackling interdependencies among food, energy, and water security is promising, three fundamental challenges to effective operationalization need addressing: the feasibility of science-policy integration, cross-scale inequalities, and path-dependencies in infrastructure and socio-institutional practices.

In 2015, the US National Science Foundation issued a battle cry with a call to fund US$50 million for the advancement of research on the nexus (interactions) of food, energy, and water (FEW). This heightened level of research interest has now been matched by multiple international research calls, demonstrating that the nexus has become a powerful metaphor used to convey the interdependencies between society and the natural systems on which it depends. Key to nexus thinking are the interactions between FEW security1. From 2011 to 2015, 291 organizations from policy, business, and academic circles were involved in FEW nexus security activities2.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Patricia Romero-Lankao is at the NCAR Research Application Laboratory, Urban Futures, 3450 Mitchell Lane, Boulder, Colorado 80301, USA,

    Patricia Romero-Lankao

  2. Timon McPhearson is at The New School's Urban Ecology Lab, 79 Fifth Avenue, 16th Floor, New York, New York 10003, USA,

    Timon McPhearson

  3. Debra J. Davidson is at the Department of Resource Economics and Environmental Sociology, 515 General Services Building, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta T6G 2H1, Canada,

    Debra J. Davidson

Authors
  1. Patricia Romero-Lankao
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  2. Timon McPhearson
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  3. Debra J. Davidson
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Correspondence to Patricia Romero-Lankao.

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Romero-Lankao, P., McPhearson, T. & Davidson, D. The food-energy-water nexus and urban complexity. Nature Clim Change 7, 233–235 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate3260

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