About this Research Topic

Background

The highly interwoven nature of food-energy-water systems (FEWS), climate change, and extreme weather will mean ongoing challenges to the capacity of these sectors to support human well-being, grow the economy, and provide critical environmental services. Society has yet to evaluate the resilience of FEWS to climate, environmental, and management stresses as it shapes strategies to support sustainable development over the next decades. These issues constitute a quintessential interdisciplinary research challenge and require a well-structured science agenda and supportive information services for implementing key findings that governments and stakeholders can adopt. Integrated policy pathways require usable research findings, applications, models, real-time information systems, and decision support systems. In addition, stakeholder engagement is essential to communicate the benefits and results of these approaches and to engage appropriate groups in their implementation.

Food-energy-water systems, intensifying climate change, and societal responses will define the long-term performance of local, regional, national, and global economies, and will serve as a major force in shaping future decisions on the environment, engineered infrastructure, social justice, and national security. The interactions are complex and are anticipated to complicate, firstly, the identification of FEWS sensitivities and, secondly, the subsequent design of suitable FEWS adaptation measures. Decisions made today are likely to create decade-to-century legacy effects, making it critical to take a comprehensive view of how different FEWS systems are configured and interact, and how they can respond to changes in a manner that is both resilient and sustainable.

The goal of this Research Topic is to present a collection of next-generation research studies on FEWS that is emerging from the scientific, integrated assessment, and policy/governance domains and to assess the directions they suggest for future research and decision-making. Collectively, the assembled papers will discuss a broad suite of issues including the design of suitable FEWS frameworks that can simultaneously advance modeling, data integration, and assessment capabilities that, in turn, can support hypothesis-based research, assessments, stakeholder engagement, and the implementation of new management approaches.

We welcome submissions on three major themes:

1) Conceptual models and frameworks for climate-FEWS studies.
Candidate topics: Characterizing climate stressors; frameworks to analyze the integrated system; approaches to assess how climate trends and extremes disrupt FEWS.

2) Performance of contemporary and future FEWS.
Candidate topics: Specific architectures of FEWS; FEWS capacity to remain resilient under climate and environmental change; regional and larger-scale FEWS assessments; and evaluating how climate-impacted FEWS yield economic shocks or benefits.

3) Linking technical, cultural, economic, policy, and regulatory responses to emerging FEWS challenges.
Candidate topics: Trade-off studies to recognize multiple and interacting planning options; quantitative, policy-relevant metrics for decision-support from in situ, remotely sensed, or survey data; approaches to stimulate productive interchange among scientists, decision-makers, and managers; the role of new technologies and systems integration on FEWS; and links to global public policies including the climate and sustainable development agendas

An Editorial will outline the major findings of the collection, including a summary of the authors’ ideas on the best ways to advance this field of research.

Topic Editor Assoc. Prof. Pietro Elia Campana receives financial support from European Energy AB and Solkompaniet Sverige AB and holds a patent relating to the control of solar water pumping systems for irrigation. All other Topic Editors declare no competing interests with regard to the Research Topic subject.

Keywords: food-energy-water nexus, climate change, climate variability, climate extremes, regional climate, societal impact, environmental management, resource management, climate impact mitigation, climate adaptation

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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