Development of water-energy-food nexus index and its application to South Africa and the Southern African Development Community

Due to the exponential growth in the global population and economic development since the industrial revolution, increasing pressure has been placed on natural resources, with various publications warning that vital planetary boundaries are being exceeded. Following the 2008 financial crisis, concerns have been raised that if finite resources such as water are not effectively managed then the environment, livelihoods and economic development will be detrimentally impacted. The interdependency of water, energy and food security has also been highlighted, and since 2011 significant attention has been given to the water-energy-food (WEF) nexus in academic, policy, regulatory and development fraternities. The WEF nexus is a multi-centric lens through which to assess sustainable development and integrated resource management. This approach has direct links to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), principally SDGs 2, 6 and 7. Because the WEF nexus has constituents that are measured in different units, and at different spatial and temporal scales, there is a need to normalise indicators from each of these sectors before integrating them. One such method is the development of a composite indicator (or index), and this report presents the development of an index with the WEF nexus as its guiding framework. The methodology that has been employed in constructing the proposed composite indicator is that of the Joint Research Centre’s Competence Centre on Composite Indicators and Scoreboards (JRC-COIN). In the development of the proposed WEF Nexus Index, a total of 87 indicators relevant to an anthropocentric WEF nexus framework (that was developed as part of this project) were reviewed to ascertain their relevance and data availability. Following an iterative process, a total of 21 indicators were selected for inclusion in the proposed composite indicator, with adequate data being available for 170 countries. The WEF Nexus Index values per country are plotted on the following world map: iv Once the results of the WEF Nexus Index were determined, these results were plotted on two separate graphs against the SDG Index and the Human Development Index (HDI). The R-squared values for the two plots are 0.72 and 0.66 respectively. If these R-squared values were too high, i.e. approaching unity, then the WEF Nexus Index would be rendered redundant. These graphs, however, yield interesting insights.