The water, food and energy nexus in Pakistan

By Dr. Aqeel Ahmed Bazmi; Daily Times: October 30, 2018

The water–food–energy Nexus has emerged as a new perspective in debates concerned with
balancing potentially conflicting sectoral imperatives of large scale development investments
concerned with energy, water or food security. The water, energy and food security nexus means
that water security, energy security and food security are intimately linked. Food production
requires water and energy; water extraction, treatment, and redistribution require energy; and
energy production requires water. An actions in any one area usually have impacts on one or
both of the others. The water-food-energy nexus is central to sustainable development and the
complex linkages between these critical domains require a suitably integrated approach to
ensuring water and food security, and sustainable agriculture and energy production.
Pakistan is an agricultural country and agriculture generates nearly 60 percent of the country’s
GDP and provides employment for 43.4 percent of its workforce. Most importantly, 65.9 percent
of the population living in rural areas is directly or indirectly dependent on agriculture for their
livelihood. Rising population, shrinking agricultural land, increasing demand for water resources,
widespread land degradation and inadequate infrastructure appear to be major concerns of the
agriculture sector in Pakistan. Alongside, among all the imminent challenges that Pakistan is
facing, water crisis is the most critical problem of the country. According to the world resource
institute, the country is among the leading five that face extremely high water scarcity and low
access to safe drinking water and sanitation. According to the Pakistan Council of Research in
Water Resources, Pakistan may run dry if the prevalent situation continues. Despite having
tremendous potential, Pakistan is confronted with an intense ‘energy crisis’. The lack of long
term sustainable policies, mismanagement, bad governance and lack of awareness at the grass
root level are some of the causes leading to the crisis.
Current frameworks of the government of Pakistan are partial as they largely represent a water-
centric perspective. The CJP stressed the need for accelerating efforts to build dams and Prime
Minister appealed to the overseas Pakistanis for making dam’s donation. Concentrating on water
crisis alone will not a sustainable framework to cope with the amalgamated water–food–energy
crisis country is going to face in coming era. The country needs a dynamic Nexus framework
that attempts to equally weight sectoral objectives and provides a new paradigm for diagnosis
and investigation.
The water–food–energy Nexus has emerged worldwide as a new perspective to structure large-
scale investments. The World Economic Forum (WEF) has been among the first organizations to
identify the water–food–energy Nexus as a key development challenge, calling for a better
understanding of the inter-linkages between water, energy and food at the 2008 Annual Meeting
in Davos (Water Security: Water–Food–Energy–Climate Nexus. The World Economic Forum
Water Initiative. Island Press, Washington D.C., USA; WEF 2011 Report). WEF’s Water
Initiative explored water security in relation to energy and food systems, climate, economic
growth and human security challenges, and the Water Resources Group at WEF launched a
Nexus initiative with water security as a practical entry point. The United Nations Economic
Commission for Europe (UNECE) has developed a methodology to assess the water–energy–
food–ecosystems Nexus in Transboundary Rivers and aquifers (UNECE Task Force on Water-
Energy-Food-Ecosystems, 2013). The method proposes a consultative, open-ended process to
identify the ‘‘complex chains of cause-effects that link human interventions to environmental
degradation and availability of resources”. An illustration of Water-Energy-Food Nexus is shown
in Figure below which depicts a range of typical interactions in the cross-sectoral connections.

Nexus perspective provides most benefit in inter-sectoral negotiations if these connections are
understood as continuously evolving linkages, decomposed for the actual application context.
Policy interventions can be made in any one of the food, water or energy sectors while it is
evident historically that, decision-making has been largely sector specific and independent in
Pakistan. The scenario developed in the Fig. depicts three discrete entry points, introducing
sector specific interests. As mentioned earlier, the Nexus approach aims for cross-sector
coordination instead of sector specific optima to avoid unintended side-effects and negative
sectoral trade-offs.
Water, energy, and land demand is influenced by different policies, for example those relating to
agriculture, energy, land-use, food, fiscal, credit, prices, and subsidies. These relationships are
dynamic (as shown in Fig.). However, policies in Pakistan, as in many developing countries, are
generally narrowly sectoral, with disconnect between those for food, water, and energy. By
ignoring the underlying interdependence of the three sectors, policies sometimes have the
unintended consequence of shifting a crisis from one sector to another. With competing demand
for resources and increasing environmental pressure, an important challenge, the country is
facing, is how to minimize conflicts among the three main sectors of food, water, and energy,
and promote synergies in policies and instruments.
The lack of connection between sectoral agencies has created an imbalance between the sectors
in terms of demand and supply. The connections between macro-economic and sectoral policies
and cross-sectoral impacts are not yet internalized into national policies. The cross-sectoral
externalities have placed additional pressure on land, water, energy, and other scarce resources
and undermined the long-term sustainability of food, water, and energy security. The
government of Pakistan must develop policies and instruments to decouple food production from
water and energy use intensity and environmental degradation to make it sustainable.
Coordinating investments and developing consistent policies that allow for sustainable
development would ideally involve:
a) Diagnosis and subsequent understanding of all sectoral connections;
b) Specifying potential trade-offs and synergies for the specified context;
c) The design of effective measures that help mitigate or reconcile trade-offs and exploit
synergies; and
d) Ongoing monitoring and assessment of investment consequences on Nexus dynamics.
The development strategies may include to analyze the following projects for coordinating
investments:
a) Hydropower (led by the energy perspective).
b) Energy crops (led by the energy perspective).
c) Irrigation projects (led by the food perspective).
d) Water diversion (led by the water perspective).

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Dr. Aqeel Ahmed Bazmi

Associate Professor,

Department of Chemical Engineering,