Abstract
The food-energy-water (FEW) nexus has emerged as an alternative to
improve the management of the resources used in the food, energy, and
water systems. However, there are limited case studies in the Latin
American and Caribbean region where a FEW nexus methodology has been
implemented. This region will greatly benefit from a FEW nexus approach
since more than half of the electricity comes from hydropower, and even
though the region has excess in water resources, these resources are not
equally distributed and they are poor managed. In this study, an urban
FEW nexus framework was used in the Otun River Watershed (ORW) to
evaluate the changes in food, energy, and water demand for four
scenarios (base scenario, year 2017; scenario 1, year 2035-population
growth; scenario 2, year 2035-population growth and reduction in locally
produced food; scenario 3, year 2035-population growth and increase in
electricity generated locally). Additionally, regional climate models
(RCMs) were used to estimate the water availability in the ORW from
2030-2039. The results show that water demand could increase by 16% and
energy demand will increase roughly 15% for scenario 2, while water
demand in scenario 3 will likely remain unchanged in relation to the
current conditions (base scenario). As the Latin America and Caribbean
region is the most urbanized region in the world, the modeling tool
developed as part of this study may be implemented in other urban
watersheds in the Andean Region.