A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Water-Energy-Food Nexus Resilience: Global Insights and Implications for India

The Water-Energy-Food (WEF) nexus has emerged as a critical framework for addressing resource interdependencies and building resilience against climate change impacts. Despite its growing prominence, significant knowledge gaps remain, particularly in quantifying resilience and integrating cross-sectoral dynamics into actionable policymaking. This review synthesizes existing literature on the WEF nexus, focusing on its evolution, current trends, and resilience frameworks. Employing meta-analysis, this study quantifies key trends in WEF nexus resilience research, identifying dominant methodologies, geographic patterns, and gaps in policy and practice.

The findings reveal a global emphasis on conceptual frameworks and modelling approaches, with limited application to localized contexts, especially in India. To bridge this gap, this study highlights the need for policy coherence analyses and system dynamics modelling to assess resilience of the WEF-nexus under various climate scenarios. Thus, providing actionable insights for researchers and policymakers, emphasizing the importance of integrated, scalable, and data-driven approaches to enhancing the resilience of WEF systems.