Training Tomorrow’s Leaders for Integrated and Sustainable Resource Management

The struggle to balance human and environmental well-being is becoming increasingly complex in an era of compounding global crises. Greater pressure on our shared resources in this changing context is creating new and wicked problems that will require new problem-solving. To meet this challenge, the United Nations’ 17 interrelated Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) serve as a call to action for countries to work in global partnership to solve these complex issues.

Working toward the SDGs requires unprecedented coordination and cooperation across borders and sectors. Although governments and practitioners typically manage food, water, and energy separately, these sectors are deeply interconnected and interdependent. As such, solutions and strategies for their sustainable development must also be interconnected to maximize synergies and mitigate trade-offs across sectors and stakeholders.

To achieve this massive system shift, wide-scale capacity development is urgently needed. The next generation of water, energy, food, and ecosystem professionals must become water-energy-food-ecosystem (WEFE) nexus professionals, who think and work together in an integrated way to tackle problems through nexus approaches.