Nexus approaches to freshwater resilience: an overview from the IPBES Nexus assessment water chapter

In the published IPBES Nexus Assessment on the interactions and interlinkages between biodiversity, water, food, health and climate, a set of water response options that deliver solutions to water system challenges were reviewed. Yet this selection emerged from a stepwise procedure that identified 136 response options, globally that deliver across ten water challenges: (i) water and ecosystems, (ii) water and climate, (iii) water quantity, (iv) water quality, (v) water supply and sanitation, (vi) water and culture, (vii) water and equity, (viii) water and governance, (ix) marine, and (x) cross-cutting. Across these water challenges, a minority of response options focused on water alone (n=32), while a large fraction focused on interactions between water and other nexus elements (with one other nexus element n=39, and several nexus n=39). In this presentation, we will show (i) how the response options were identified, (ii) which water challenge was most studied to date, and (iii) what is the current understanding that these response options deliver in relation to freshwater availability. The major findings of the assessment are that a large fraction of humanity’s freshwater demand is used to meet food production, and is dependent on forest for accessible freshwater. Thus a nexus approach to freshwater challenges is fundamental and already being up-took across water challenges, yet few cross across all nexus elements. Further, trade-offs emerge across nexus elements, either when focusing on water or on other elements, and resilience of freshwater therefore depends upon and affects resilience of the whole system, thus would benefit from a more integrated perspective rather than single element approaches.

IPBES Nexus Assessment Water team:

Maria J. Santos, A.A. Kouame, M. Lalika, C.M. Minaverry, S. Oinonen, L. Sandin, M.D. Simatele, N. Rafa, H.S. Embke, A. Gupta, D. Mason-D’Croz, S.C. Phang, T. L. van Huysen, R. Kumar, C. Paukert