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1. Thinking Big and Thinking Small: A Conceptual Framework for Best Practices in Community and Stakeholder Engagement in Food, Energy, and Water Systems

   https://doi.org/10.3390/su13042160  

   Kliskey, Andrew ; Williams, Paula ; Griffith, David L. ; Dale, Virginia H. ; Schelly, Chelsea ; Marshall, Anna-Maria ; Gagnon, Valoree S. ; Eaton, Weston M. ; Floress, Kristin ( February 2021 , Sustainability)

   null (Ed.)

   Community and stakeholder engagement is increasingly recognized as essential to science at the nexus of food, energy, and water systems (FEWS) to address complex issues surrounding food and energy production and water provision for society. Yet no comprehensive framework exists for supporting best practices in community and stakeholder engagement for FEWS. A review and meta-synthesis were undertaken of a broad range of existing models, frameworks, and toolkits for community and stakeholder engagement. A framework is proposed that comprises situational awareness of the FEWS place or problem, creation of a suitable culture for engagement, focus on power-sharing in the engagement process, co-ownership, co-generation of knowledge and outcomes, the technical process of integration, the monitoring processes of reflective and reflexive experiences, and formative evaluation. The framework is discussed as a scaffolding for supporting the development and application of best practices in community and stakeholder engagement in ways that are arguably essential for sound FEWS science and sustainable management. 

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2. A systems approach to analyzing food, energy, and water uses of a multifunctional crop: A review

   Gebrai, Yoel ; Ghebremichael, Kebreab ; Mihelcic, James R ( June 2021 , Science of the total environment)

   null (Ed.)

   Multifunctional crops can simultaneously contribute to multiple societal objectives. As a result, they represent an attractive means for improving rural livelihoods. Moringa oleifera is an example of a multifunctional crop that produces nutritious leaves with uses as food, fodder, and a biostimulant to enhance crop growth. It yields seeds containing a water purifying coagulant and oil with cosmetic uses and possible biofuel feedstock. Despite Moringa oleifera's (and other multifunctional crops') various Food-Energy-Water uses, optimizing the benefits of its multiple uses and livelihood improvements remains challenging. There is a need for holistic approaches capable of assessing the multifunctionality of agriculture and livelihood impacts. Therefore, this paper critically evaluates Moringa oleifera's Food-Energy-Water-Livelihood nexus applications to gain insight into the tradeoffs and synergies among its various applications using a systems thinking approach. A systems approach is proposed as a holistic thinking framework that can help navigate the complexity of a crop's multifunctionality. The “Success to the Successful” systems archetype was adopted to capture the competition between the need for leaf yields and seed yields. In areas where there is energy and water insecurity, Moringa oleifera seed production is recommended for its potential to coproduce oil, the water purifying coagulant, and a residue that can be applied as a fertilizer. In areas where food insecurity is an issue, focusing on leaf production would be beneficial due to its significance in augmenting food for human consumption, animal feed, and its use as a biostimulant to increase crop yields. A causal loop diagram was found to effectively map the interconnections among the various uses of Moringa oleifera and associated livelihood improvements. This framework provides stakeholders with a conceptual decision-making tool that can help maximize positive livelihood outcomes. This approach can also be applied for improved management of other multifunctional crops. 

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3. Iowa Urban FEWS: Integrating Social and Biophysical Models for Exploration of Urban Food, Energy, and Water Systems

   https://doi.org/10.3389/fdata.2021.662186  

   Thompson, Jan ; Ganapathysubramanian, Baskar ; Chen, Wei ; Dorneich, Michael ; Gassman, Philip ; Krejci, Caroline ; Liebman, Matthew ; Nair, Ajay ; Passe, Ulrike ; Schwab, Nicholas ; et al ( May 2021 , Frontiers in Big Data)

   null (Ed.)

   Most people in the world live in urban areas, and their high population densities, heavy reliance on external sources of food, energy, and water, and disproportionately large waste production result in severe and cumulative negative environmental effects. Integrated study of urban areas requires a system-of-systems analytical framework that includes modeling with social and biophysical data. We describe preliminary work toward an integrated urban food-energy-water systems (FEWS) analysis using co-simulation for assessment of current and future conditions, with an emphasis on local (urban and urban-adjacent) food production. We create a framework to enable simultaneous analyses of climate dynamics, changes in land cover, built forms, energy use, and environmental outcomes associated with a set of drivers of system change related to policy, crop management, technology, social interaction, and market forces affecting food production. The ultimate goal of our research program is to enhance understanding of the urban FEWS nexus so as to improve system function and management, increase resilience, and enhance sustainability. Our approach involves data-driven co-simulation to enable coupling of disparate food, energy and water simulation models across a range of spatial and temporal scales. When complete, these models will quantify energy use and water quality outcomes for current systems, and determine if undesirable environmental effects are decreased and local food supply is increased with different configurations of socioeconomic and biophysical factors in urban and urban-adjacent areas. The effort emphasizes use of open-source simulation models and expert knowledge to guide modeling for individual and combined systems in the urban FEWS nexus. 

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4. An instrumental‐reflexive approach to assessing and building food system resilience

   https://doi.org/10.1111/gec3.12581  

   Hedberg, Russell C. ( June 2021 , Geography Compass)

   For several decades resilience thinking has served as a major theoretical lens for social‐ecological research, with geographers playing important roles in both advancing the theory and offering meaningful critique. In recent years resilience thinking has also emerged as a promising tool for the assessment of food systems, yet there is significant disagreement among scholars as to the best way to apply resilience thinking to food systems. At the heart of these disagreements lie a set of conceptual tensions that have long existed in the resilience community regarding best practices for operationalizing resilience and the extent to which resilience thinking can (or should) engage with issues of social justice and power dynamics. Geographers, particularly those working in the fields of political ecology and critical physical geography, are well positioned to navigate these tensions and contribute to the growing scholarship on food system resilience through what I call an instrumental‐reflexive approach to resilience thinking. Drawing on scholarship on the role of environmental science in political ecology and critical physical geography, I develop an approach to resilience that deploys empirical assessments to provideinstrumentalknowledge of food systems, but also engagesreflexivelywith empirical findings to consider how they interact with entrenched power relations across multiple scales—practices that have a long tradition in geographic scholarship. In so doing, I chart an approach to resilience that, provides significant utility for farmers and food system workers, and gives support (though not the ultimate justification) for dismantling unjust and exploitative structures in our current food systems.

    

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5. Diets, Food Miles, and Environmental Sustainability of Urban Food Systems: Analysis of Nine Indian Cities

   https://doi.org/10.1029/2018EF001048  

   Boyer, D. ; Sarkar, J. ; Ramaswami, A. ( August 2019 , Earth's Future)

   With ever‐growing populations, cities are increasingly interested in ensuring a well‐functioning food system. However, knowledge of variation between individual city food systems is limited. This is particularly true in countries such as India, experiencing significant issues related to food security and sustainability. This paper advances the understanding of urban food systems, by analyzing the unique food systems of nine cities within India, through the integration of multiple city‐specific data sources including demand of residents, visitors and industries, and commodity‐specific supply chains to assess nutrition, environmental impact, and supply risk. This work finds a large degree of intercity food system variability across multiple food system characteristics. Specifically, levels of undernutrition vary, with the percentage of city populations who are underconsuming protein ranging from 0% to 70%, and for calories 0% to 90%. Environmental impacts (consumptive water loss, land use, and greenhouse gas emissions) of urban food demand also show variation, largely influenced by differing composition of residential diet. Greenhouse gas emissions are also largely influenced by location of production and spatially informed energy intensity of irrigation. Supply chain distance (“food‐miles”) also vary by city, with the range of 196 (Pondicherry) to 1,137 (Chennai) km/Mg—shorter than more industrialized nations such as the United States. Evaluating supply chain risk in terms of water scarcity in food‐producing regions that serve city demand finds production locations, on average, to be less water‐scarce than the watersheds local to the urban environments. This suggests water‐intensive agriculture may at times be best located at a distance from urban centers and competing demands.

    

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