As part of the “Water Resources Policy and Management” group of sessions, SOS-Water Project coordinators (IIASA), together with project parterns from Universitat Politècnica de València and Politecnico di Milano, will be convening a session at EGU 2023 focused on water-food-energy-environment nexus trade-offs.

The General Assembly 2023 of the European Geosciences Union (EGU), will be held at the Austria Center Vienna (ACV) in Vienna, Austria and online, from 23–28 April 2023.

The session will talk about how water sustains societies, economies and ecosystem services globally. Increasing water demands driven by ongoing socioeconomic development, coupled with shifts in water availability due to climate change and variability and land use change, are increasing competition and conflict over access to and use of freshwater resources in many regions around the world. To address these challenges, integrative approaches to water management and policy are required to balance and manage trade-offs between social, economic and environmental uses of water. This session will provide a forum for showcasing novel and emerging research at the intersection of agricultural production, energy security, water supply, economic development, and environmental conservation. In particular, we encourage contributions to the session that: (i) identify knowledge gaps and improvements to understanding about the critical interconnections, feedbacks, and risks between system components, (ii) highlight development of new methods or tools for evaluating and monitoring trade-offs and performance in water allocation and management between different users and sectors, (iii) evaluate alternative technological, policy, and/or governance interventions to address water-food-energy-environment system challenges in different locations and at various scales (local, regional, and/or global), and (iv) discuss examples of initiatives within research and policy designed to facilitate integrative planning of water-food-energy-environment systems.

For more information about EGU 2023, see https://www.egu23.eu/