Interlinking Drought with Water-Food-Energy Nexus: Application of an Integrated Approach towards Sustainable Resource Management

Under the current changing environment, water, food and energy resources are under immense stress. For sustainable and effective planning, development and management of these interrelated resources, the implementation of a holistic and integrated approach has become crucial. This study supports the evaluation of extreme event of climate change (drought) and its effect within the Water-Food-Energy (WFE) nexus framework at farm level. The integrated approach utilized in this study quantitatively describe the dynamics of WFE nexus with respect to different severity levels of drought. Different rain-fed and irrigated crops are used and compared to analyze the multiple implications of drought on different dimensions of the nexus and on WFE nexus by assessing the drought induced WFE nexus index (DI-WFENI). The application area for the implementation of this approach is the northern part of Cyprus (NC). The analysis indicated that there is a gradual increase in the occurrence and magnitude of drought in different regions of NC. During moderate, severe, and extreme drought, the estimated reduction in the yield of rain-fed crops was 31, 39 and 44%, while increase in irrigation water requirement (IWR) of irrigated crops was 5, 9 and 14%, respectively. Relatedly, the temporal rise and fall of groundwater levels, quantified using hydrological indices are closely related to the positive and negative values of meteorological drought indices. In different locations of aquifer depending upon heterogeneous climate, soil and hydrogeological characteristics and pattern of utilization, the groundwater trend varied from one location to another. The increase in the energy requirement of irrigated crops is computed as 10, 15, and 22 % for moderate, severe and extreme severity levels, respectively. As a result of the reduction in yield of rain-fed crops and increase in the IWR and energy requirement of irrigated crops, the mean reduction in farmers profitability during moderate, severe and extreme drought is calculated as 233, 296 and 352 $ per hectare. The computation of droughtinduced WFE nexus index (DI-WFENI) revealed that the computed mean score of DIWFENI for moderate, severe and extreme drought is approximately 0.85, 0.84 and 0.82, respectively. Based on the sensitivity analysis it is found that DI-WFENI is highly influenced by yield, IWR and crop price.