The Water, Energy, and Food Security Nexus in Asia and the Pacific

This open access book will undertake a comprehensive analysis of "Water-Energy-Food Nexus", with a sub-regional focus on East and Southeast Asia. Countries in East and Southeast Asia are experiencing rapid economic growth and environmental challenges with significant global impacts in economic, environmental, and social aspects. Population in East and Southeast Asia was 2.3 billion in 2018, comprising 30.3% of global population. The sub-region covered 27.8% of global GDP in 2016 and carbon emission contributed to 37.6% of global emission (UN Statistics, 2019). The sub-region is responsible for significant consumption of global water resources and food production. With explosive population growth and rising of living standards, increasing demands will be placed upon land and water resources in order to meet the future demands for food and energy. The diverse range of geographical, political, and economic conditions of the sub-region combined with global climate change and urbanization is posing a new set of challenges. Increasing competition over finite resources across the various sectors and transboundaries will be intensified without long-term strategy to achieve water, energy, and food security at a regional scale.

The book will introduce complex links between water, energy, and food security and explore socioeconomic implication of the nexus approach with a special focus on the cross-cutting issues (e.g. climate change, gender, urbanization, impacts on environment and economy, and transboundary). By presenting the most recent research and science-based evidences, the book will provide new insight on nexus solutions.

The book opens with introduction and sub-regional overview, offering rationale of the regional approach to solve nexus equations. The first section of the book will provide "Regional Overview" of present status of water, energy, and food resources, to share basic facts and figures. The second section focuses on "Subregional Issues" and analyses water-energy-food relationships based on different case studies. The section also investigates the socioeconomic and environmental challenges of the sub-region. The third section studies all the major "Cross-Cutting Themes" as the key drivers of policy, actions, and strategies in the sub-region and some innovative approaches and advanced nexus solutions. The last section, "Integrated Narrative", discusses sub-regional efforts to achieve long-term security. A final chapter of the book will explore the some future scenarios and open a new question to best deal with future challenges using the nexus approach.