Combining the Water–Energy–Food and Food Waste–Food Loss–Food Security Nexuses to Reduce Resource Waste

Abstract

The availability of water, energy and food plays a key role in meeting the basic needs of the world population and allowing them to achieve prosperity and supports the UN’s sustainable development goals (SDGs). These three fundamental resources are closely interrelated, with their deep interdependencies reflected in various concepts of the ‘water–energy–food nexus’ (W–E–F). One-third of the total food produced globally results in food loss and waste (FL and FW), which also means the waste of resources used for their production, mainly energy and water. We thus propose a fusion of the W–E–F nexus and the FS–FW–FL nexus to achieve a better correlation between food production and food consumption in order to avoid additional negative effects. We explore the research problem of how the availability of water, energy and food resources can be improved by reducing FW and FL. The objective of this paper is to present an overview of opportunities to reduce the negative effects of FWL. The review paper is based on a comprehensive analysis of the literature, exploration of various (basic and extended) W–E–F models and their linkages with SDG and the entirety of the food supply chain from field to table. In addition to a literature analysis, we applied comparative methods, modeling, visualization and basic indicators of descriptive statistics. Although the amount of literature on this topic is growing, we found that systematic knowledge is still scarce, with each new study putting forth yet more new solutions. Although the data in various studies show somewhat different results, we conclude that reducing FW and FL has a positive, harmonizing effect on the W–E–F nexus.

Keywords

• nexus W–E–F
• nexus FW–FL–FS
• food waste
• food losses
• food security
• resource efficient technologies