Water–food–energy nexus tradeoffs in the São Marcos river basin
Author
dc.contributor.author
Henrique Bof, Pedro
Author
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Fernades Marques, Guilherme
Author
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Tilmant, Amaury
Author
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Dalcin, Ana Paula
Author
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Olivares Acuña, Marcelo Osvaldo
Admission date
dc.date.accessioned
2021-12-01T12:39:58Z
Available date
dc.date.available
2021-12-01T12:39:58Z
Publication date
dc.date.issued
2021
Cita de ítem
dc.identifier.citation
Water 2021, 13, 817
es_ES
Identifier
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10.3390/w13060817
Identifier
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https://repositorio.uchile.cl/handle/2250/182973
Abstract
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Given its potentialities and characteristics, energy generation, food production, and water
availability have a strong interdependency and correlation. Water is needed to produce energy
and food, while energy is required to produce water and food. This nexus brings several challenges
when scarce water resources must be allocated among competing uses, often in the form
of unexpected tradeoffs. Addressing those challenges requires knowledge about the water–food–
energy nexus and the associated tradeoffs to support water allocation and management decisions.
Those tradeoffs are still not properly understood in the uncertain and stochastic context of water
availability. When not properly accounted for, the results are conflicts, loss of investments,
environmental impacts, and limited effectiveness of sectoral policies, all of which undermine a country’s
development model relying on water and energy security. This paper addresses the competitive
uses of recent irrigated agriculture expansion and existing hydropower production in a Brazilian
watershed with water conflicts, assessing the economic tradeoffs and water values between energy
and irrigated agricultural production under uncertainty. An explicitly stochastic hydro-economic
model is used to determine water’s economic value and its variation in space and time. Results indicate
that the agricultural benefits outweigh the potential energy losses, and the best course of action
should explore an economically compensated reallocation strategy, upon negotiation among users,
rather than imposing water supply cutbacks to the agriculture sector.
es_ES
Patrocinador
dc.description.sponsorship
Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Cientifico e Tecnologico (CNPQ) 201185/2011-3
Coordenacao de Aperfeicoamento de Pessoal de Nivel Superior (CAPES) 88881.065004/2014-01
es_ES
Lenguage
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en
es_ES
Publisher
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MDPI
es_ES
Type of license
dc.rights
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States