The Mediterranean Region is facing growing challenges to ensure food and water supply as countries experience increasing demand and decreasing availability of natural resources. Interconnected impacts from climate change, population growth, urbanization and environmental deterioration are further exacerbating the difficulty to meet both ecosystem and human needs.
In this context, the nexus approach aims at managing and alleviating conflicts, trade-offs and leveraging synergies across sectors, moving towards an efficient, integrated use and management of the Water, Energy, Food and Ecosystems Nexus (WEFe Nexus). WEFe Nexus is beyond a conceptual idea, the Nexus approach integrates management and governance across the multiple sectors of food, energy, water, and ecosystems. However, tools to support Nexus implementation in practice are still in early phases of development. Against this background, the BONEX project aims to provide practical and adapted tools, examine concrete and context-adapted technological innovations, enhance policies and governance and facilitate WEFe Nexus practical implementation that balances the social, economic, and ecological trade-offs.
With this purpose, the project aims to produce a novel, robust, transdisciplinary, and diagnostic WEFe Bridging Framework (named WEFeF) to serve the production of context-specific Nexus Bridging Plans (NBPs). These NBPs will be concise and practical context-specific plans guiding the transdisciplinary implementation of the proposed WEFe solution approaches targeting policy makers and practitioners.
Within BONEX, WEFeF will be implemented and validated in 7 Demonstration Projects (DPs) in the Mediterranean Region (Italy, Jordan, Lebanon, Portugal, Morocco, Spain and Tunisia). NBPs will be built in a participatory way with the active involvement of local actors. As a result, BONEX will provide policymakers and practitioners with an interactive decision-making tool to evaluate trade-offs and synergies and nexus solutions approaches in a transdisciplinary manner.
The project is coordinated by Bioazul. University of Kassel coordinates Work Package 1 on the Conceptualization of the WEFE Bridging Framework.
