UNraveling the knoT of the Water-energy-food nexus usIng ecosySTems services

UNTWIST aims at exploring new pathways to operationalize Water-Energy-Food (WEF) nexus concepts into practice.

Despite the urgent need of adopting systemic thinking for the governance of water resource and interconnected sectors has been widely recognized and stressed by EU, several challenges for an effective mainstreaming of such frameworks into policy remain.

These can be largely attributed to the lack of frameworks and tools able to effectively quantify interlinkages and feedbacks between nexus component and related ecosystems and to account for the effect of exogenous drivers of change (e.g. climate change).

By combining ESs theories with complex system analysis, UNTWIST aims at contributing to fill these gaps demonstrating, through case studies applications, the potential of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in developing integrated models supporting the quantification of critical interactions occurring in WEF nexus systems.

Ecosystem Services (ESs) flows, being in the centre of the WEF relationships, will be used as common assessment endpoints to disentangle the nexus, thus contributing to reveal potential interdependencies between policy sectors and unlock opportunities for delivering integrated solutions addressing key challenges towards the achievement of interconnected Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The research project, which will last 24 months, will be mainly conducted at the Basque Centre for Climate Change (BC3) in Bilbao (Spain), under the supervision of Professor Ferdinando Villa, while a secondment period, will be performed at GECOsistema (Italy), an environmental consulting based in Rimini.

UNTWIST results will be disseminated and the main findings will be communicated with tailored actions to a wide audience, including the academic community, policy makers, industries and the general public.