Water-Energy-Food Nexus: the roadmap in Korea |
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학술지명 THA2017
저자 최병만
발표일 2017-01-25
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Water, energy and food (WEF) are essential for human well-being, poverty reduction and sustainable development. However, experts expect that demand for freshwater, energy and food will increase significant over the next decades due to population growth, economic development, urbanization and climate change. Further complicating this challenge is that these resources are interrelated: It takes water to produce energy; it takes energy to source, treat, and distribute water; and both water and energy are required to produce food. The interdependence of these three resources is known as the water-energy-food (WEF) nexus. The WEF nexus complicates addressing these resources’ scarcity independently, as actions taken with regard to one resource are likely to affect the other two. Moreover it is recommended developing a proper and tailored concept of the WEF nexus and assessment tool to aid its harmonious development and to meet the global environmental standard. The development of the WEF nexus concept and assessment tool is necessary to understand the interconnections in quantitative way and have better chance to improve the management of those valuable resource for future security. Recently Korea launches a research program to establish a roadmap on the WEF nexus to cope with a water shortage caused by a severe drought, energy and food crisis in future. The roadmap includes: (i) assessment of current status of water, energy and food sector (ii) suggestion of efficient management practices of water, energy and food (iii) understanding the legal, regulatory and institutional framework related to water policy and development planning (iv) development of database on nexus elements and assessment tools for policy implementation based on nexus approach (v) new technologies of the nexus and determine sites of the WEF nexus test-bed. With the recent water-energy nexus technology innovation, much attention has been paid into solar photocatalysis for water treatment and self-sustaining electrocatalytic process for wastewater treatment. In addition, the system of intensification (SRI), no-till farming and smart farming with IoT are less water-intensive agricultural methods in water-food nexus technology. Those issues will be discussed in this paper. |