Water-Energy-Food Nexus Analysis at Basin Level to Improve the Resources Availability and Accessibility Sources

Water, Energy and Food (WEF) are considered global security, prosperity, and equity pillars. These resources are fundamentally linked: food production requires both water and energy; pumping, treating, and transporting water requires energy; energy production requires water, which faces numerous challenges, including growing population density, rapid urbanisation, economic growth, poverty, hunger, changing diet habits and climate changes. In this study, we have developed a spatially distributed (block-scale) WEF-Nexus model with the help of the Modified Pardee-RAND Water-Energy-Food Security Index (MPRWEFSI) equation to meet the basin-scale WEF challenges. The Pardee RAND WEF security index has been modified by considering the industrial and agricultural water requirement, renewal energy and water sources, modern farm equipment uses, hunger index, etc. The developed model can produce the resources availability, accessibility and security indexes. We have tested the model in the Kangsabati river basin for 2011. The estimated values of the water, energy, and food subindex reveals that the Jaypur block (1.0) had the highest water security, the Bipur-II block (0.865) had the highest energy security, and the Jhargram block (1.0) had the highest food security. Conversely, the Jhalda-II block (0.65) has the lowest water security, the Kharagpur-I block (0.52) has the lowest water security, and the Purulia-I block (0.56) has the lowest water security. Furthermore, Jaypur (0.92) and Jhalda-II (0.63) had the highest and lowest overall WEF nexus index. The result also shows that the basin's water, energy, and food availability indexes are 0.88, 0.91 and 0.65, accessibility indexes are 0.92, 0.60, and 0.98, and security indexes are 0.89, 0.73 and 0.79, respectively. The overall WEF nexus Index of the basin is 0.80. Although the availability and accessibility of resources are in a considerable range, different schemes and policies are needed to achieve a hundred per cent resources availability, security, and security. Likewise, basin-scale WEF management will ensure better management of WEF resources holistically and equitably. This study will be helpful in influencing the policy and resource planning process.

Keywords: Resources Availability, WEF-Nexus, Pardee RAND, Basin-scale