The Energy-Water-Food Nexus and Its Implications for China–Africa Cooperation on Climate Change

Abstract

In the context of climate change, security is not only a relationship between countries, but also the interdependence between issues. In the African region, water, energy, and food form a security nexus with great sensitivity and vulnerability. Security nexus provides a new explanation for resources competition, cooperation, and conflict in the African region, and promotes water-food-energy research shift from the technical aspects to foreign policy level, and finally provides new international political ideas for resource and environmental solutions in Africa. In the perspective of security nexus, solving the ecological problems in Africa through international cooperation is not a simple technical issue, but an international political and economic issue. Based on the special political and economic advantages that China owns, jointly coping with the challenges of security nexus of China and Africa will provide an important opportunity to deepen their friendly and cooperative relations, broaden social basis of China–Africa relationship, and seek new growth points for economic cooperation.