Research on World Agricultural Economy

The Food‑Energy‑Water Nexus Optimization: A Systematic Literature Review

Oliver O. Apeh

Faculty of Engineering and Built Environment, University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg 2092, South Africa

Nnamdi I. Nwulu

Faculty of Engineering and Built Environment, University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg 2092, South Africa

DOI: https://doi.org/10.36956/rwae.v5i4.1170

Received: 13 July 2024; Published: 31 October 2024

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Abstract

The sudden rise in population and the need to sustain natural resources have subjected many researchers to another dimension of an interesting study, such as integrating food, energy and water into a single entity. Tampering with natural resources, especially food, energy, or water, could be an aspect that hinders the requirement to meet the world’s growing city needs. The food-energy-water  nexus has become even more difficult  due to agricultural globalization, the essential task of which is to secure regional food and water. Therefore, the systematic literature review in this article critically investigates food interactions with energy and water optimization for sustainable development and illustrates the key points, networks, and gaps within this literature. The databases from Scopus, Web of Science, and ScienceDirect were the key retrieved data in this study from 2010 to 2024. A total of 641 research journals, book chapters and conference papers were systematically reviewed. The results based on country mapping analysis strongly favour advanced countries, for example, Germany, the United States , and the United Kingdom, recording almost more than 40% of published articles; while China, including other developing countries, record more than 5% of food-energy-water nexus research. In addition, several food-energy-water nexus articles are restricted to about one-quarter of subject categories, such as water resources, environmental sciences and green sustainable science technology. The results also depicted that the  food-energy-water nexus method encourages inter-sectoral and multilevel governance, scholarly and private sector, thereby supporting the intricacies and inadequacies in attaining the sustainable development goals. The prioritization of the food-energy-water nexus approach, particularly during the incident of COVID-19, can be a complete method to sustainably exploit natural resources to support the attainment of environmental sustainability. Thus, studying the integration of food, energy and water would produce better knowledge in advancing the flexibility of natural resources and decreasing multifaceted global poverty.

Keywords: Sustainability; Food‑Energy‑Water Nexus; Resource Efϐiciency; Optimization; Policy‑Making

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