The Global Centre for Risk and Innovation (GCRI)
Risk Academy, a Nexortium programmeSystems and Nexus StudiesDepartment of Nexus-Based Risk Management
Water, energy, food and ecosystems as one system: links, trade-offs and synergies
The water-energy-food-ecosystems nexus covers the interactions between water, energy, food and ecosystems: how a choice in one sector changes risk in the others, the trade-offs and synergies between them and how policies and investments can be made coherent, applied to basins, cities and national planning.
risksacademy.comsystems-nexusdiscipline
Twin figures for the Tonle Sap and the Lower Mekong at Phnom Penh, counted from its layers at their stated dates.
For Water-energy-food-ecosystems nexus: the faculty's twin of Tonle Sap on the planet map, the globe and in 3D. Pick a generator, switch layers, run the instruments; every layer prints its provider and date.
Drag to move, right drag or Shift with a drag to turn and tilt, Ctrl with the wheel to zoom. Keyboard: arrows move, Shift with arrows turn and tilt, + and - zoom, 0 resets, V steps through the views, Escape clears.
Flat plan of the same data: the lake and rivers, the dams, the plants by capacity, the cropland and tree cover cells and the numbers below. The 3D twin opens on devices with WebGL once its data and library have been checked; discharge, vegetation, surface water and the annual land cover load in the twin on request, each with its data date.
The map loads from this site as it nears the view (MapLibre 6.9.1, checked by hash).
The discipline teaches nexus thinking from its origins in the water-energy-food nexus literature, the water-energy, water-food and energy-food links and the ecosystems that regulate them, trade-off and synergy analysis, nexus indicators and nexus governance, under the 1995 Mekong Agreement and the 1997 Watercourses Convention as the basin frames in force. The faculty's loop simulator is its instrument on the Tonle Sap: GloFAS inflow at Kratie, a reservoir you size, the turbine, irrigation on the cropland share ESA WorldCover measured, the flooded lake and a catch index, with every parameter on screen and the surface-water date scrub showing the flood pulse the loop abstracts. A graduate can read a basin's four systems from open data, say where one sector's gain is another's loss and write a nexus assessment in which model output is never a warning and a classification is never a harvest.
This area covers the interactions between water, energy, food and ecosystems: how a choice in one sector changes risk in the others, the trade-offs and synergies between them and how policies and investments can be made coherent. It is taught in the department of Nexus-Based Risk Management, Faculty of Systems and Nexus Studies, through courses still to be authored and 5 more that also teach it.
8 subtopics, taught across its courses and labs.
Recent developments in water-energy-food-ecosystems nexus, each with its source; sources checked on 16 October 2026. Summaries are short readings of the source; follow the link for the full account.
News and research as they are published, per discipline, with the faculty's other tools.
The newest research, preprints, news and humanitarian reports for Water-energy-food-ecosystems nexus, each with its source and date, load here. Open the research and news hub
No course has this as its primary discipline yet. It is listed so the gap stays visible.
Courses also taught here and the connected disciplines teach the methods it will build on.
These courses count in their own primary discipline and also teach this one; they do not count towards its achievement as primary courses.
Nexus Foundry system pages describe what each system and its rooms are designed to do; they are not a service on offer, and studying here gives no access to them.
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Water-energy-food nexus | The interdependence of water, energy and food security and the need to manage them together. |
| Trade-off | A gain in one sector that comes at a cost in another. |
| Synergy | An action that brings benefits in more than one sector. |
| Embedded water | The water used to produce a good, also called virtual water. |
| Policy coherence | Alignment of policies across sectors so they reinforce each other. |
The catalogue lists each course with its outcomes, labs, hours and level.