Driving the Water-Energy-Food nexus in the context of sustainable development

Abstract

These three are critical to sustainable development, with synergies and trade-offs, that if not managed well can derail sustainable development efforts. This realisation led to global leaders meeting in 2011 at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, agreeing to drive the WEF nexus in a sustainable or integrated way. Although the Millennium Development Goals missed an opportunity to clearly factor the WEF nexus especially in its targets, there is hope that the approach will be adopted under the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) framework. After the Sustainable Development Goals agenda was established by the United Nations (UN) in 2015, the WEF nexus activities were factored in as part of the SDGs, especially goals 2, 6 & 7 (Figure 1). Based on the decisions taken by the UN on the SDGs, various countries, including South Africa, are at various stages of driving the WEF nexus both at technical and policy levels.

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