Hyderabad’s Water-Energy-Food Nexus: Achieving Sustainable Integration

Governing the Nexus of Water, Energy and Food: The Case of Wastewater Reuse in Agriculture

Synergies are required to ensure coordination between UN agencies (on norms and indicators), Member States (on coherence of policy instruments) and consumers (on perceptions of safety and affordability of services) to advance the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) target 6.3 which focuses on reuse of wastewater. In this paper, we employ theoretical insights derived from an agent-based modeling approach to undertake a critical examination of the recent UN-WATER directive on SDG target 6.3 and advocate for an improved understanding of factors that determine whether and how effective wastewater reuse will be possible while accommodating for regional variation and institutional change.

We demonstrate that by applying the Nexus approach, it is feasible to overcome siloes by forging concepts of trade-offs and synergies to draw out coupled perspectives of bio-physical and institutional dimensions of water-energy-food interactions. By employing this proposition, the paper advocates for place-based observatories as a mechanism that can support valorization of data and methodological assumptions as a precursor to robust monitoring of the SDGs.

The systematic use of literature reviews and expert opinion to develop and pilot-test composite indices via place-based observatories raises the prospect of a data-light approach to monitoring SDGs. Specifically, what are the merits of relying on extensive survey data compared to composite indices that, while being amenable to supporting benchmarking and scenario analysis, can provide the insight needed to inform decision-making and robust monitoring of global goals?

Monitoring Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Target 6.3 on Wastewater Reuse: Method, Data and Applications of Agent-Based Modeling

The gulf between theory and practice in Global Public Goods Research has become apparent in recent years. For instance, International organizations such as the Consultative Group on International Agriculture Research (CGIAR) have placed a premium on adoption rates for technical options that encourage resource recovery and reuse as an indicator of the effectiveness of international development assistance. However, a recent CGIAR Standing Panel on Impact Assessment synthesis report found adoption rates for full-fledged NRM technologies to be remarkably and consistently low, ranging between 1 and 10% in areas where a variety of actors had been promoting these technologies.

Similarly, research on the merits of integrated billing for water supply and sanitation in the Netherlands showed that consumers stood to benefit in terms of less time and money spent on administration. However, despite the efficiency gains that could arise from overcoming administrative siloes, combined billing has not succeeded because this would require the Water Boards (responsible for sanitation) and private companies (responsible for water supply) to give up some of their autonomy with regards to their sources of financing.

These examples highlight a key issue that speaks to the question posed by this Special Issue: Achieving Water-Energy-Food Nexus Sustainability – a Science and Data Need or a Need for Integrated Public Policy? There is a lack of understanding of the institutional pathways (mediated by state and market mechanisms) for adoption of the results of controlled experiments and case studies.

Recognizing the lack of understanding of (i) the institutional environment (i.e., property rights, legal and policy framework), (ii) the trade-offs involved in decision making and (iii) administrative culture and policy priorities, an agent-based modeling approach has emerged to emphasize the use of role games and experiments to collect data as well as having stakeholders involved in validation of multi-dimensional models.

Agent-based modeling can potentially support analysis of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) because it emphasizes the need to examine mechanisms for coordination and information sharing among networks of public agents, in the absence of which synergies in decision making fail to emerge. Specifically, with reference to SDG target 6.3, synergies are required to ensure coordination between UN agencies (on norms and indicators), Member States (on coherence of policy instruments) and consumers (on perceptions of safety and affordability of services) to ensure effective reuse of wastewater.

The failure to ensure coordinated action could exacerbate unintended consequences of policy action. In existing literature on public choice and New Institutional Economics (NIE), we can find some theoretical propositions that promote understanding of synergies in environmental planning and management.

For instance, rational choice scholars imply that improved information could potentially overcome the effect of siloes through coordinated and evidence-based decision making. NIE scholarship, on the other hand, focuses on the aspect of strategic interaction in the decision-making process. This scholarship implies that decisions of officials within public agencies need not be made merely based on available information (i.e., data and evidence) but more on strategic considerations.

The analysis of the role of data and evidence in the decision-making process would be enhanced by acknowledging historical specificities of the institutional environment. This is precisely because these historical specificities shape subsequent choices in environmental planning and management, i.e., whether to prioritize infrastructure construction or service delivery, promote centralized or decentralized governance, and emphasize public or private service delivery models.

Political Economy of Public Decision Making in the Water-Energy-Food Nexus

Agriculture has today become a key driver for four of the eight Planetary Boundaries (PB’s) (identified by Rockstrom et al., 2009) that are at a critical stage of risk: freshwater use, biogeochemical flows, changes in biosphere integrity and climate change. We could deduce from the arguments of “stages of growth” theorists that as economies grow, infrastructure begins to play an important role in connecting populations to services in the form of irrigation, wastewater treatment or hydro-power.

This is where planetary scale analysis of climate change, biogeochemical flows, biosphere integrity and land-system change need not necessarily align with decision making at administrative scale: plot, farm, local government or river basin authority. In other words, while results of planetary scale analysis may emphasize the finiteness of water, soil and waste resources and advocate for recharge of aquifers, restoration of soils, multiple uses of forest ecosystems, extended life-cycle management of infrastructure or tax rebates for adoption of renewable energy, administrative scale decisions need not necessarily support policies, projects or programs that emphasize circular economy pathways such as reuse, re-manufacture, replace, reduce and retrofit.

On the contrary, political economy compulsions may drive decision makers to commit more resources toward exploitation of newer sources of water and energy without ensuring that established infrastructure is properly functioning. This may satisfy entrenched political interests but may exacerbate pressure on environmental resources.

Given the stark divergence between planetary and administrative scales of analysis, five contemporary trends within the agriculture sector necessitate particular attention to enable a transition from a narrow focus on crop systems toward food systems:

1. De-coupling of GDP growth from labor force participation in agriculture: As economies grow, the agricultural labor force often declines, creating a need to consider different farm types and their economic prospects.

2. Increasing diversion of water from agriculture toward urban water supply: This reflects the growth in secondary towns at the peri-urban interface, creating competition for limited water resources.

3. Changes in diets away from staples toward processed food: This reflects changes in the composition of the labor force and changes in income and non-farm employment.

4. Land sub-division with potential to affect the viability of farming operations: Especially in high-density tropics, smaller farms may become less viable.

5. The growing influence of transnational corporations: This has exacerbated the separation of power from local politics and decision-making structures.

These trends necessitate a shift from a narrow focus on crop systems toward a more holistic food systems approach that considers the diverse and evolving nature of agriculture in developing countries.

Trade-off analysis can inform targeting of development interventions in line with locally defined norms of fairness. For example, in situations where equity is prioritized, targeting may lead to design of subsidy schemes that focus attention on reducing income poverty among poorer households and increased investment of savings to improve productivity of livestock and agricultural assets.

Agent-based modeling emphasizes the importance of coordinated action to overcome siloes in decision making. Agent-based modeling of trade-offs will reflect the fact that policy and management choices that operate at global, national and local scales are guided by norms and agency and individual behavior that are focused on ensuring a balance between planetary scale imperatives of resource conservation/reuse and institutional priorities of effectively delivering critical public services at the appropriate administrative scale.

The degree to which institutional synergies are forged will determine the success in ensuring a balance and mitigating rebound effects in environmental planning and management. When planning over-emphasizes either bio-physical or administrative imperatives, rebound effects are bound to be amplified either in the form of environmental risks or institutional siloes.

Historical institutionalist literature enables us to identify three components of robust synergies:

1. Social networks that support information flows and knowledge exchange among different functionaries within and across departments, ministries and agencies.

2. Deployment of complementary skill sets (capacity) by key players.

3. A critical mass of financing and technology that can be appropriated by agencies and departments focused on achieving a particular policy goal.

Several enabling factors for robust synergies include:

1. A clearly articulated legal and policy framework.
2. A clear set of policy instruments for implementation of the legal and policy framework.
3. Data and evidence on distribution of bio-physical and institutional risks.
4. Manageable levels of administrative discretion with regards to interpreting and implementing policy instruments.
5. An incentive structure (penalties and rewards) for compliance with policy instruments.

Agent-based modeling while highlighting tensions between the application of Nexus principles in research and development practice has the potential to identify pathways that can overcome silos in environmental planning and management. Firstly, Nexus research implies transdisciplinary dialogue involving experts and non-experts to develop, pilot-test and validate models. Secondly, Nexus research also implies the necessity of translating scientific results to inform design, monitoring and evaluation of programs and projects that adopt Nexus principles in development practice.

A pathway of how Nexus principles could be applied in development practice is offered by multiple use water services, of which a prime example is wastewater reuse. The tensions between application of Nexus principles in research and development practice suggests an urgency for coupling global models of bio-physical change with models of institutional change at appropriate administrative scale.

Monitoring Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Target 6.3 on Wastewater Reuse: The Case of the Wastewater Reuse Effectiveness Index (WREI)

Wastewater reuse in agriculture assumes importance since it has been estimated that approximately 20 million hectares of land is currently under cultivation worldwide using wastewater. When wastewater is better managed, significant economic benefits can be derived in developing countries through reuse for productive purposes like agriculture, kitchen gardens and poultry rearing.

Some of the direct benefits of wastewater collection and reuse could include double cropping and lower input costs for agriculture. There may also be important economy-wide trade-offs of encouraging freshwater swaps through use of treated domestic wastewater in agriculture. While these trade-offs could involve enhanced source sustainability of the urban water supply, lower energy pumping costs and improved food security arising from increased farm incomes, linearity of outcomes cannot be assumed.

The workshop on SDG monitoring methodologies revealed that the indicators currently being used by the UN to monitor SDG target 6.3 were focused on bio-physical aspects of wastewater use, did not explicitly consider the issue of wastewater reuse, and were biased toward reporting status on wastewater use and not toward understanding the incentives that would facilitate wastewater reuse.

To address these limitations, a Wastewater Reuse Effectiveness Index (WREI) was developed based on a combination of bio-physical and institutional components. The WREI relies on data valorization, expert opinion and coupling of bio-physical and institutional perspectives of water-energy-food interactions to effectively monitor SDG 6.3.

The WREI is composed of two components:

1. The bio-physical component (WRI-BCI) includes variables like the proportion of wastewater treated, proportion of water bodies with good ambient water quality, and proportion of wastewater reused.

2. The governance, socioeconomic and environmental component (WRI-GSE) includes variables related to policy environment, decentralization, awareness, irrigation, and population affected by wastewater, among others.

The composite WREI is then constructed using these two component indices. The WREI can be estimated in two ways: with equal weights for each variable, or with differential weights based on expert opinion to reflect the relative importance of each variable in a country or regional context.

The WREI was pilot-tested using data from India, where wastewater reuse in agriculture is emerging as a policy and legislative priority, especially to address water scarcity in urban areas. The pilot-testing revealed the importance of arriving at an appropriate set of indicators before weights are assigned based on expert opinion.

Aggregation and synthesis of data from bio-physical and institutional and governance domains in the form of a composite index can be a useful tool for policy making. The combination of bio-physical and governance dimensions in the WREI index portrays the difference between theory and reality because conventional reuse indices by emphasizing the bio-physical dimension fail to explain the institutional conditions that would enable translation of reuse potential into effective reuse of wastewater.

The WREI can help structure the discussion relating to the choice of norms, indicators and methodologies for data collection, analysis and synthesis, and highlight the pressure this places on country nodal agencies in terms of required capacities and skill sets for monitoring effective reuse of wastewater. Setting up expert panels, building consensus and organizing and validating the results prior to their use requires innovation in didactics and pedagogy, which can become an additional focus of global public goods research undertaken by international organizations.

Place-Based Observatories: Bridging the Gap between Theory and Practice in the Water-Energy-Food Nexus

The continuous back and forth that is required between theory, method and active engagement with considerations of revenue and expenditure that pre-occupy policy makers can be supported by online learning platforms, co-curation of data and models, and co-design of research questions.

Water services may take the form of water supply, irrigation or wastewater treatment. Energy in the form of hydro-power or bio-energy is required to pump water supplies or treat wastewater. The costs of setting up “demand-driven” infrastructure depends upon the extent of local tariff collection and the type of technology that is chosen to provide the service.

When decisions are made regarding water, energy and food services, especially in unbounded contexts, laws and policies must be implemented through recourse to instruments such as notifications, directives, guidelines, standards and circulars. These instruments could be interpreted and executed differently in different locations, affecting program or project outcomes such as public health or food security.

Optimization principles of reuse and recycle may be theoretically appealing, but their actual realization at administrative scale is determined by “allocative” decisions, alignment of rules and existence of a critical mass of networked functionaries within line departments responsible for delivery of water, energy and food services. This could produce differential results in terms of enhancing water, energy and food security.

Place-based observatories can play an important role in developing and validating composite indices as a mechanism for monitoring global goals. Some key insights include:

1. Downscaling global environmental models: Place-based observatories can support the provision of site-specific information from regional networks of independent researchers and institutes.

2. Fostering cooperation among researchers: Place-based observatories can facilitate the co-creation of research questions based on a unified interpretation of policy challenges.

3. Developing typologies: Place-based observatories can support the development of typologies for specific development challenges, such as salinization or soil erosion.

4. Structuring data, analysis and results: Place-based observatories can present data, analytical methods and results in a practical manner through knowledge translation tools like scenario analysis, agent-based modeling, composite indices and performance benchmarking.

5. Facilitating data and model valorization: Place-based observatories can enable the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of case studies that pilot-test and validate Nexus typologies and thresholds in development practice.

Conclusion

This paper has undertaken a critical examination of the recent UN-WATER directive on SDG target 6.3, demonstrating that synergies are required to ensure coordination between UN agencies, Member States and consumers to advance the achievement of the goal of reuse of wastewater.

The development, pilot-testing and validation of the Wastewater Reuse Effectiveness Index (WREI) relied upon data valorization, expert opinion and coupling of bio-physical and institutional models of water-energy-food interactions. This highlights the applications of the Nexus approach in managing trade-offs and fostering synergies in environmental planning and management.

The WREI offers a novel perspective on monitoring SDG target 6.3 by pointing out that effective reuse of wastewater can emerge only when a threshold of bio-physical risk (e.g., for water quality or precipitation) is crossed that is backed by governance/institutional resources in the form of financing, trained functionaries and networks for information sharing within public agencies.

The systematic use of literature reviews and expert opinion to develop and pilot-test composite indices via place-based observatories raises the prospect of a data-light approach to monitoring SDGs. This approach can provide the insight needed to inform decision-making and robust monitoring of global goals, overcoming the challenge of attributing research results to policy outcomes which has proved to be the bane of global public goods research.

Place-based observatories can play a crucial role in supporting transdisciplinary research by downscaling global environmental models