Understanding Water-Food-Energy Nexus in the Climate Change Era and the Roadmap to Implementation in South Africa

Definition Of The Wfe Nexus

The WFE nexus is closely associated to integrated water resources management (IWRM) and has particular focus on water resources. It aims at using integrated approaches to assess investments and designs of multi-sectors while balancing objectives, values and motivations of competing parties. This affiliation however, is the source of the concept’s criticism with authors purporting that it has skewed focus on water rather than natural resources, which demeans its holistic nature (Smajgl et al., 2015; Bohensky et al., 2009). Authors such as Shah (2009) and Muller (2015) question the applicability of the concept particularly in developing countries of Africa and Asia. In their argument, the authors claim that attempts to implement the WFE nexus in developing countries impose prescriptions on resources use rather than promoting deliberate discovery of processes to manage the resources effectively and efficiently. Consequently, the success of these initiatives is slow and even sometimes regressed by poor acceptability by implementers and targeted users (Muller, 2015).