The NEXOGENESIS project, a Horizon 2020 research initiative, has released its first policy brief, “Mainstreaming the Water-Energy-Food-Ecosystems (WEFE) Nexus into Policy Making.” The policy brief provides practical recommendations for creating sustainable, integrated policies to manage natural resources effectively and foster resilience.
Highlighting the interdependence of water, energy, food, and ecosystems, the policy brief provides a roadmap for embedding WEFE nexus thinking into decision-making. Its recommendations aim to enhance coherence across key policy domains such as agriculture, climate, energy, and biodiversity while advancing sustainability and resilience.
In particular, the policy brief brings forward five key recommendations:
-Support cross-sectoral policy-making by allocating human and financial resources and establishing clear mandates to develop decision-making structures that address interconnected challenges.
-Use the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a platform for integrating WEFE nexus thinking into policies, ensuring alignment with global sustainability objectives.
-Foster circular processes by leveraging both existing and new decision-making structures to promote resource efficiency.
-Enhance WEFE data management capacity by harmonizing, integrating, and optimizing data management tools to support evidence-based policymaking.
-Promote public-private partnerships as a cross-sectoral mechanism to drive innovation and collaboration in applying the WEFE nexus approach.
NEXOGENESIS also introduces tools to support policymakers in tackling complex resource management challenges, as the NEPAT policy assessment engine, a Self-Learning Nexus Assessment Engine, and the WEFE Nexus Footprint visualization tool, which simplify and support informed policymaking. The project applies its framework across five case studies in Europe and South Africa, addressing diverse challenges and contributing to global goals like the European Green Deal and the UN Water Action Agenda.
The full policy brief is available here. For more information, please contact us.
About NEXOGENESIS
NEXOGENESIS is a four-year European collaborative project financed by the European Commission under the H2020 programme. It gathers 20 partners from Europe and South Africa focusing on facilitating the next generation of effective and intelligent water-related policies using artificial intelligence and machine learning to assess policy impacts on the WEFE nexus to suggest new ways to design better, more harmonious policy.
