Water-food-energy nexus in global cities: solving urban challenging interdependencies together

Abstract

Abstract Understanding how water, food, and energy interact in the form of the water-food-energy (WFE) nexus is essential for sustainable development which advocates enhancing human well-being and poverty reduction. Moreover, the application of the WFE nexus has seen diverse approaches to its implementation in cities across the globe. There is a need to optimize knowledge sharing to improve urban information exchange focused on the WFE nexus’ application and impact on the UN Sustainable Development Goals. In this study, Natural language processing (NLP) and affinity propagation algorithm are employed to explore and assess the application of the WFE nexus on a regional basis as well as at city levels. The results show that after the exhaustive search of a database containing 32,736 case studies focusing on 2,233 cities, cities with the most potential to encounter resource shortages (i.e. WFE limitation) are systematically underrepresented in literature (African and Latin American cities). Hence, with regional and topic bias, there is a potential for more mutual learning links between cities that can increase WFE nexus policy exchange between Northern and Southern hemispheres through bottom-up case-study knowledge. In addition, this study shows that Southern hemisphere cities can benefit from knowledge transfer because of their limited urban intelligence programs.