Global Governance Initiative Annual Report 2005

This is an annual report of the WEF

Multi-Scale Investigation of Water-Energy-Food Nexus

Water, energy and food (WEF) are among essentials to meet the basic human needs and ensure economic and social development. Globally, the demand for WEF rapidly increases while billions of people are still lacking access to these needs. The main drivers behind increased demand for WEF are population growth, urbanization, economic growth and climate change. It may also be driven by changes in demography, technological developments and diet preferences. To achieve a sustainable supply and effectively manage the demand for WEF, complex interactions between WEF (nexus) need to be understood. Traditionally, WEF have been studied and managed separately with a minimal focus on their interactions. The primary objective of this study is to investigate WEF nexus at different scales. A bottom-up approach has been employed to develop a system-dynamics based model to capture the interactions between WEF at end-use level at a household scale. Additionally, a city scale model has been developed to quantify WEF implications for agricultural, commercial and industrial sectors. The household level model is then integrated with the city scale model to estimate WEF demand and the generated organic waste and wastewater quantities. The integrated model investigates the impact of several variables on WEF: human bahaviour, diet, household income, family size, seasonal variability, population size, GDP, crop type and land-use for agriculture. The integrated model is based on a detailed survey of 407 households conducted to investigate WEF over winter and summer season for the city of Duhok, Iraq. The city is chosen as a case study due to the rapid population growth, considerable urbanization, changes in land-use pattern and shifting climate trends toward longer summer duration. These put an additional pressure on WEF demand in the city. The collected data of WEF and household characteristics (demographic and socio-economic) have been intensively analysed to provide a better understanding for the factors influencing WEF consumption. The surveyed data was used to develop statistical regression models for estimating demand as a function of household characteristics using stepwise-multiple-linear and evolutionary polynomial regression techniques. The integrated WEF model was subjected to sensitivity analysis and uncertainty assessment. A comparison of the model simulation results were made with the historical data. The model results show a good agreement with the historical data. The WEF model is then applied to assess the risk and resilience of WEF systems under the impact of seasonal climate variability (i.e., increase/decrease in the number of summer days). In order to decrease the risk of not meeting per capita demand for WEF and increase the resilience of system for providing per capita demand for WEF, a number of demand management strategies have been investigated in water and energy systems under the impact of seasonal variability. The results show that using recycled greywater for non-potable application in Duhok water system is the most efficient strategy but it increases the energy demand. Additionally, anaerobic digestion of food waste and wastewater sludge for energy recovery can increase the resilience of Duhok energy system. Finally, the impact, of Global Scenario Group (GSG) scenarios (Market Forces, Fortress World, Great Transition and Policy Reform) on the WEF consumption and resulting implications, has been investigated using the WEF model. The results suggest that the Fortress World scenario (an authoritarian response to the threat of breakdown) has the highest impact on WEF consumption. In the Great Transition scenario, WEF consumption would be the lowest. The model results suggest that the food-related water consumption is the highest in the Policy Reform scenario

Private equity: financial investors, public services, and employment

The report surveys the activity of private equity and other financial investors in the water, waste and healthcare sectors in Europe. It includes the appraisal of a WEF study on employment effects

Epistemic communities and developmet [sic]: the Davos process and knowledge production

ABSTRACT This dissertation seeks to examine the role of an international institution, the World Economic Forum (WEF), its meetings (referred to as the Davos process), in determining the global development agenda particularly that of Africa. The research is anchored in the conceptual framework of epistemic communities, as explored by Peter Hass. This conceptual framework aims to explain how ideational structures routinely influence policy and decision making. The dissertation interrogates why and how actors coalesce around the WEF, and help the WEF in shaping decisive debates which have profound implications for important development issues such as poverty alleviation, debt reduction, private sector development and the future of the global economy. Starting as an informal interaction of leading Western European businessmen, the annual conclave of the WEF at Davos, Switzerland, has grown into leaps and bounds to incorporate core corporate, political and non state actors across the globe in a structured framework of influence and agenda setting. In addition to its influence on contemporary economic debates, the WEF has established formal knowledge creation and knowledge management structures, in which it conducts research across a wide array of domains. The dissertation also examines how the WEF has gradually expanded into Africa, helping shape the discourse at the level of the African Union (AU) and the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC), through the Africa WEF summits and the sub regional WEF summits. The dissertation concludes that although the WEF has been instrumental in shaping knowledge about African development issues, there is need to engage more African voices in future development debates. Yet, the dissertation also concedes that the WEF dominates in the development arena largely because of the persistence of global asymmetries in the global production of knowledge and ideas. So, for Africa to overcome these asymmetries, it will have to evolve sound endogenous sources of knowledge systems

Modeling the Water-Energy-Food Nexus in ObR-E’s: The Eight (8) Coordinates

The need to formulate quantifiers for water, energy and food (WEF) is necessary sequel to conservation issues worldwide. Existing methodologies on the WEF nexus appear less fitting in sustainability arguments because of incompleteness. This article analyzes the WEF nexus in open but restricted environments (ObR-E’s) with completeness assumption in form of the known inter-intra dependence of nexus elements for sustainability and better conservation practice. The analysis leads to the discovery of the Jalingo equation whose any non simplistic solution is a solution to the WEF problem in some ObR-E’s world wide. It is important to seek other non simplistic solutions for this equation under certain constraints known to affect WEF in ObR-E’s of specialty

Challenges in operationalizing the water–energy–food nexus

Concerns about the water–energy–food (WEF) nexus have motivated many discussions regarding new approaches for managing water, energy and food resources. Despite the progress in recent years, there remain many challenges in scientific research on the WEF nexus, while implementation as a management tool is just beginning. The scientific challenges are primarily related to data, information and knowledge gaps in our understanding of the WEF inter-linkages. Our ability to untangle the WEF nexus is also limited by the lack of systematic tools that could address all the trade-offs involved in the nexus. Future research needs to strengthen the pool of information. It is also important to develop integrated software platforms and tools for systematic analysis of the WEF nexus. The experience made in integrated water resources management in the hydrological community, especially in the framework of Panta Rhei, is particularly well suited to take a lead in these advances

Private equity and employment - the Davos/WEF/Harvard study

The World Economic Forum at Davos has published a major study showing that workplaces of firms taken over by private equity have 10% less employees 5 years after the takeover, than other similar workplaces. The rate of plant closures, opening, acquisitions and disposals is twice as high as in other firms, and the net effect is still a job loss of 3.6%-4.5% after only 2 years, compared with other firms. Firms taken over by private equity are also more likely to go bankrupt than publicly quoted firms

Long-term tillage and crop rotation effect on soil aggregation

Non-Peer ReviewedTillage and cropping sequences play a key role in controlling soil aggregation. We measured water-stable aggregate (WSA), wind erodible fraction (WEF), and geometric mean diameter (GMD) for six mid to longterm (8 to 25 years) experiments comparing tillage and cropping sequences in the Brown, Dark Brown, and Black Chernozemic soils of Saskatchewan. In the coarse-textured soil, no-tillage (NT) had a higher value of WSA by 49% more than in the wheat-phase of fallow-wheat (F-W), and had a lower value of WEF by 27% less than in the fallow-phase of F-W compared with minimum tillage (MT). In the medium-textured soils, NT had a higher WAS, ranged from 17 to 38%, and a lower WEF, ranged from 37 to 64% compared with conventional tillage (CT), depending on crop rotation systems. The reduced WEF under NT in the medium-textured soils was due mainly to increased GMD. In the fine-textured soils, NT had a higher WSA, ranged from 10 to 19% compared with MT or CT, and a lower WEF by 47% compared with MT only in the heavy clay soil. Change in GMD was not detectable in the light- and fine-textured soils. Continuous cropping compared with rotations containing fallow improved soil physical properties by increasing WSA, reducing WEF in the medium and fine-textured soils, and increasing GMD only in the medium-textured soils. Of the three soil physical properties determined in this study, WSA was the most sensitive to changes in tillage and crop rotations, then WEF and the least GMD

Learning from past coevolutionary processes to envision sustainable futures: Extending an action situations approach to the Water-Energy-Food nexus

Despite near-global consensus on the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Climate Agreement, unresolved and politically contentious trade-offs have undermined implementation. One exemplary case facing difficult trade-offs are Water-Energy-Food (WEF) nexus cases. Here, we extend the nascent ‘Social-Ecological Action Situations’ framework to analyse past coevolution of WEF nexus cases (or other social-ecological systems) to envision possible futures where trade-offs are equally considered and minimized. We illustrate the value of the approach for a WEF nexus case in Switzerland with upstream hydropower reservoirs, water-bound biodiversity, and emerging downstream agricultural irrigation needs. The proposed solution-oriented, transformative approach goes beyond existing frameworks by analysing past coevolution of the intertwined system to build system understanding and to envision a future with concrete policies that would result in a higher adaptive capacity of the system and a compromise within the WEF nexus. We argue that this perspective helps to devise policies to address trade-offs in WEF nexus cases and thereby to tackle global crises

Predicting soil wind erosion potential under different corn residue management scenarios in the central Great Plains

Various models and simplified equations are available to predict wind erosion potential. However, their performance can be often site-specific, depending on soil characteristics and agronomic practices, warranting sitespecific model validations. Thus, in this study, we 1) validated the wind erodible fraction (WEF) predictive equations by Fryrear et al. (1994) and López et al. (2007) and 2) estimated the total soil loss with the Singleevent Wind Erosion Evaluation Program (SWEEP) using 3-yr measured data from six experiments located across a precipitation gradient in the central Great Plains. Each site had three corn (Zea mays L.) residue removal treatments: control (no removal), grazed, and baled. The measured and predicted WEF were significantly correlated. While the Fryrear et al. (1994) equation performed better than the López et al. (2007) equation, it underestimated WEF with 59% uncertainty across site-years. To reduce this underestimation and uncertainty, we developed a new statistical equation (WEF%=84.3+2.64×% silt-0.30×% clay-7.43×% organic matter- 0.15×% residue cover; r2=0.56). The predictive ability of the new equation was, however, no better than that of the existing predictive equations, suggesting the need for further refinement of WEF equations for the region. Simulated total soil loss by wind using the SWEEP model indicated that corn residue baling may increase soil loss if residue cover drops below 20% in the study region. Overall, the existing WEF equations could under- or overestimate WEF based on site-specific residue management, warranting further model refinement and site-specific validation, whereas the SWEEP estimated soil loss corroborates the critical importance of maintaining sufficient residue cover (\u3e 20%) to reduce wind erosion