Supporting better decisions across the nexus of water, energy and food through earth observation data: case of the Zambezi basin
2018
Abstract. The water–energy–food (WEF) nexus has been promoted in recent
years as an intersectional concept
designed to improve planning and regulatory decision-making across the three
sectors. The production and consumption of water, energy and food resources
are inextricably linked across multiple spatial scales (from the global to
the local), but a common feature is competition for land which through
different land management practices mediates provisioning ecosystem
services. The nexus perspective seeks to understand the interlinkages and
use systems-based thinking to frame management options for the present and
the future. It aims to highlight advantage and minimise damaging and
unsustainable outcomes through informed decisions regarding trade-offs
inclusive of economic, ecological and equity considerations.
Operationalizing the WEF approach is difficult because of the lack of
complete data, knowledge and observability – and the nature of the
challenge also depends on the scale of the investigation. Transboundary
river basins are particularly challenging because whilst the basin unit
defines the hydrological system this is not necessarily coincident with
flows of food and energy. There are multiple national jurisdictions and
geopolitical relations to consider. Land use changes have a profound
influence on hydrological, agricultural, energy provisioning and regulating
ecosystem services. Future policy decisions in the water, energy and food
sectors could have profound effects, with different demands for land and
water resources, intensifying competition for these resources in the future.
In this study, we used Google Earth Engine (GEE) to analyse the land cover
changes in the Zambezi river basin (1.4 million km 2 ) from 1992 to 2015
using the European Space Agency annual global land cover dataset. Early
results indicate transformative processes are underway with significant
shifts from tree cover to cropland, with a 4.6 % loss in tree cover and a
16 % gain in cropland during the study period. The changes were found to
be occurring mainly in the eastern (Malawi and Mozambique) and southern
(Zimbabwe and southern Zambia) parts of the basin. The area under urban land
uses was found to have more than doubled during the study period gearing
urban centres increasingly as the foci for resource consumption. These
preliminary findings are the first step in understanding the spatial and
temporal interlinkages of water, energy and food by providing reliable and
consistent evidence spanning the local, regional, national and whole
transboundary basin scale.
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