Stakeholders’ engagement for the identification of measures supporting ecosystem services within the Water-Energy-Food-Ecosystems (WEFE) nexus in the Adige River basin (Italy).

Water, Energy and Food represent an interconnected nexus, with Ecosystems and the services they provide inextricably bound up in the “WEFE nexus”. Within these sectors, policies and decisions have traditionally been implemented independently, sometimes resulting in a lack of coordination and significant trade-offs among different sectors, manifesting in challenging management of different resources. To proficiently oversee resources and prevent conflicts among users, numerous pertinent policies should be thoughtfully crafted to tackle the interconnectedness of the nexus across various spatial and temporal scales.

The Adige River basin, located in the northeast area of Italy, presents a complex institutional, socio-economic, and bio-physical context; this situation is reflected on the management of resources’ availability, particularly during water scarcity emergencies. Indeed, due to their sectorial nature, these policies fail to comprehensively consider the impacts on other sectors, creating complexities in effective management. The purpose of this analysis is to develop a conceptual model which allows the identification and qualitatively characterization of the relations among the WEFE sectors supported by sectoral policies and by a set of measures aimed at support the ecosystems and their services in a WEFE nexus perspective. The measures, represented by quantitative targets, will be translated into future scenarios to assess ecosystem services based on future land uses.

As a first step, after gathering peer-reviewed literature, grey literature, and sectoral policies, an initial conceptualization of the sectors engaged in the WEFE Nexus was conducted. The conceptual model tries to provide insight into the entry points of significant WEFE policies within the nexus, while also initiating an understanding of the broader systemic effects that potential policy implementation might have. It is a visual depictions of systems that encompass crucial variables and illustrate their interconnections. The integration of local polices within the conceptual model is fundamental in identifying relevant interconnections, tailored for the case study area. To pinpoint measures and goals intended to support ecosystem services in the Adige River basin, policies associated with the ecosystems have been emphasized. Additionally, other policies have been examined from diverse sectors that target ecosystems and land components, with the objective of defining potential measures viable for future scenarios, all aimed at bolstering the ecosystem services component. Subsequently, the measures determined by the selected policies have been examined and grouped according to their typology: regulation, market and incentives. For each measure, one or more targets have been outlined based on the analyzed policies and on stakeholders’ perspectives. The selected targets are important for determining whether the defined connections among sectors can be supported by the policies. Indeed, engaging stakeholders representing diverse WEFE sectors, including governmental bodies, local communities, academia, is vital in undertaking this collaborative approach because they collaborate with knowledge, expertise, and perspectives crucial for defining targets characterizing the future scenarios that preserve and enhance ecosystem services while ensuring sustainable development within the Adige River basin.  

 The results of this study are part of the Horizon2020 project NEXOGENESIS and pave the way for future analysis on the assessment of ecosystem services based on future land use scenarios.