Water, Food, Energy and Climate Nexus : Challenges and an Agenda for Action

Global trends of population growth, rising living standards and the rapidly increasing urbanized world are increasing the demand on water, food and energy. Added to this is the growing threat of climate change which will have huge impacts on water and food availability. It is increasingly clear that there is no place in an interlinked world for isolated solutions aimed at just one sector. In recent years the "nexus" has emerged as a powerful concept to capture these inter-linkages of resources and is now a key feature of policy-making.

This book is one of the first to provide a broad overview of both the science behind the nexus and the implications for policies and sustainable development. It brings together contributions by leading intergovernmental and governmental officials, industry, scientists and other stakeholder thinkers who are working to develop the approaches to the Nexus of water-food-energy and climate. It represents a major synthesis and state-of-the-art assessment of the Nexus by major players, in light of the adoption by the United Nations of the new Sustainable Development Goals and Targets in 2015.

With a foreword by HRH the Prince of Wales

Felix Dodds is a Senior Affiliate of the Water Institute and a Senior Fellow at the Global Research Institute at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, USA. He is also an Associate Fellow at the Tellus Institute, and was the Executive Director of the Stakeholder Forum for a Sustainable Future from 1992 to 2012. He is author or editor of several books on sustainable development and resource security.

Jamie Bartram is a Don and Jennifer Holzworth Distinguished Professor of Environmental Sciences and Engineering and Director of the Water Institute at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA. He is the author or editor of numerous academic papers and books, including the Routledge Handbook of Water and Heath (2015).