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With an expected 9.5 billion people living on earth by 2050, population pressure, higher consumer expectations and climate change will tax and degrade our natural resource base, especially the LAND. With an increasing awareness of the potential of land to meet public and private development goals, land is being seen as an ever more attractive investment vehicle. The vision for…

Globally, disasters due to natural hazards such as storms, flooding, drought, earthquakes and ocean surge extract an enormous toll in terms of human lives, destruction to crops and livelihoods, and economic losses. The UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR) estimates that between 2000 and 2012, some 1.2 million people died as a result of disasters; 2.9 billion people were…

The Arab Region is facing one of the severest water scarcity crises in the world. Most of the Arab region lies in the arid and semi-arid zones. Rainfall is low, variable and unpredictable in most of the area. Several Arab countries are suffering from water deficiency and others are heading that way, with an annual population growth of about 3%. Above all, rising levels of water consumption due to…

The Water-Soil-Waste (W-S-W) Nexus provides a framework for the main factors in food production. This framework, which facilitates the assessment of how policies and activities influence agricultural productivity, is important for all levels of the agricultural industry. It facilitates the assessment of issues that deal with water, soil and waste in a balanced way with full consideration of their…

What exactly does ‘systems thinking’ have to do with the nexus approach to water, soil and waste? It comes down to the fact that nexus problems are usually very complex, and systems thinking can help us work through and understand this complexity. Nexus problems are complex because they deal with many different interactions between the numerous parts of the nexus. They are complex because they…

It is increasingly acknowledged that the close interlinkage of water and energy requires adopting a Nexus Approach to sustainable resources management. Hydropower dams that also provide water services are among the most obvious showcases of this water-energy nexus. Using the case of Mozambique, a country which is characterized by i) still considerable development challenges, ii) high importance…