We understand the global resource crisis. So why aren’t we enacting the solutions?
A theoretical understanding of the interconnectedness of water, energy, and food is not enough to drive change – we need to break institutional silos and design bankable projects.
January 2026 marked 15 years since the water–energy–food (WEF) nexus was officially launched into the global policy mainstream at the 2011 World Economic Forum. The concept was born as the world was waking up to a looming resource crisis driven by interconnected demands. Projections suggested that by 2050, global water demand would rise by 55%, with energy and food needs increasing between 50 and 80% – despite hundreds of millions already lacking adequate access to these vital resources. Crucially, there was growing acceptance that these challenges formed a closed, compounding loop, for example with agriculture responsible for roughly 70% of all global freshwater withdrawals. It was clear that shocks in one sector had direct or indirect impacts on another. Since then, the scientific community has made remarkable strides. Our understanding, quantification, and analytical tools for mapping the nexus have evolved significantly. Yet, a stubborn paradox remains: despite high-level discourse and robust modeling, practical, on-the-ground operationalization continues to lag.
To address this critical bottleneck, leading experts came together at the 7th WEFE Nexus Policy webinar, Governance and Financing Considerations for Operationalizing WEFE Nexus Solutions, hosted by the CGIAR Policy Innovations Program.
Navigating silos and fostering synergies
The presentation from Dr Bassel Daher at Texas A&M University illustrated that the primary barrier to operationalizing the nexus is rarely a lack of technology; it is the rigidity of our institutions and the absences of coordination mechanisms. Government ministries for water, agriculture, and energy are fundamentally designed to operate for their independent goals, with little opportunity for cross-sectoral planning, learning and interaction, including on programmatic budgets.
His research in nearby San Antonio provided a compelling case study. Here a rapidly growing population and booming energy and agricultural sectors are competing for water, land, and financial resources. Despite the recognized interconnectedness between these resource systems, his study revealed a marked lack of communication across sectors, compounded by differences in language, planning horizons, and silo mentality. While water officials occasionally coordinated with one another, there was virtually no communication between water institutions and those responsible for food and energy. Even in highly resourced environments, physical proximity may not necessarily result in collaborative programing.
Despite these challenges, there are attempts to improve cross-sectoral communication and coordination, as was highlighted in the regional case study of Jordan. Ranking 152nd globally on the WEFE Nexus Index, stakeholders in the region identified several barriers to cooperation including lack of common targets and coordination mechanisms. To overcome these challenges – and empowered by a recommendation to establish a WEFE Nexus Council as part of its Economic Modernization Vision 2030 – Jordan developed a governance framework to promote meaningful cross-sectoral planning and coordination. This structure is empowered by national leadership, reporting to the Economic Development Committee of the Prime Minister’s office. It includes ministries of water, energy, agriculture, environment, and planning and international cooperation. While this framework is still in its early stages of operationalization, it illustrates the potential scale of institutional restructuring required to move beyond siloed planning.
These experiences point to a common thread running through 15 years of nexus scholarship: the gap between understanding interconnections and acting on them is not primarily analytical but institutional and translational. Closing that gap requires what Dr Daher introduced as ‘simplexifying sustainability’, the practice of distilling complex, cross-sectoral interdependencies into forms that decision-makers can meaningfully act on without losing the essential interconnections that make nexus thinking valuable. At its core, simplexifying is about meeting stakeholders where they are, grounding nexus evidence in local resource realities, tailoring communication to the language and planning horizons of each sector. It also calls for the creation of structured spaces where actors who rarely interact can identify shared risks and co-develop solutions. Without that kind of contextualized, evidence-based engagement, the nexus will remain a powerful diagnostic lens that consistently falls short from effective operationalization
Making the nexus bankable
Even with improved governance mechanisms, WEFE nexus solutions cannot scale without targeted and sustained investments. Currently, a sizeable gap exists between research innovation and commercial implementation. In his address, Professor Ali Rhouma from the PRIMA Foundation highlighted that the traditional approach of developing an integrated project and simply asking financial institutions to fund it at the very end tends to fail. This is because traditional investment evaluation models often don’t properly account for the multi-sectoral co-benefits of these projects. For instance, an initiative that improves agricultural water efficiency might also drastically reduce energy consumption and mitigate land degradation, yet existing financial models typically only quantify the isolated water savings. Because institutions typically allocate funds within existing sectoral silos, complex, boundary-spanning nexus projects appear risky and unbankable to traditional investors.
To unlock private capital, project developers must learn to “speak the language of banks” and proactively design projects with innovative WEFE financing mechanisms from day one. Professor Rhouma emphasized the need to actively de-risk investments by utilizing public funds or guarantees to absorb initial risks. This could be in the form of blended finance, green bonds, or carbon credits as potential strategies. These instruments combine concessional public or donor funds with commercial capital and offer opportunities for financing for multiple goals. A prime example is Climate Investor Two (CI2), an initiative backed by the Dutch Development Bank and the European Investment Bank that successfully mixes grants, public equity, and commercial capital to fund integrated water, energy, and agricultural projects globally. Green Bonds, such as those issued by the Asian Development Bank, provide dedicated capital for clean energy and sustainable water systems, provided they meet strict independent verification. Similarly, Resilience and Catastrophe (CAT) Bonds, pioneered by institutions like the World Bank, offer a vital safety net by paying out when disasters like severe droughts occur, directly protecting water sources and agricultural stability from climate shocks.
Global lessons and lifecycle-based planning
Aligning regulations across sectors can reduce investment uncertainty, paving the way for developers to leverage Carbon Markets and Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) to monetize environmental benefits. Ultimately, these diverse financial structures can be formalized into robust public–private partnerships (PPPs) designed to equitably share the risks and rewards of nexus infrastructure between governments and private operators. The Noor Ouarzazate Concentrated Solar Complex in Morocco stands as a powerful testament to this approach, utilizing a PPP model to successfully fund large-scale renewable energy alongside critical water management infrastructure.
While securing the right financial mechanisms is critical, we must also fundamentally shift how we evaluate our baseline by calculating the ‘costs of inaction’ – as Professor Edeltraud Guenther from the United Nations University noted in her discussion following the presentations. Rather than developing more instruments, tools, or analysis, the focus should be on implementing what has already been developed – conducting a barrier analysis to identify why potentially successful approaches may not work in a specific context. By demonstrating the severe, compounding economic and social costs of remaining in silos, such as persistent hunger and lack of electricity access, it may be possible to persuade decision-makers to embrace long-term, lifecycle-based planning.
Bassel Daher is Assistant Director for Sustainable Development, Texas A&M Energy Institute and Research Fellow at the Institute for Science Technology and Public Policy at Texas A&M University; Ali Rhouma is a Project Officer at the Partnership for Research and Innovation in the Mediterranean Area (PRIMA) Foundation; Edeltraud Günther is Director of the United Nations University Institute for Integrated Management of Material Fluxes and of Resources (UNU-FLORES); Vartika Singh is Senior Research Analyst in the Natural Resources and Resilience Unit, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
This work was carried out under the CGIAR Policy Innovations Program. We would like to thank all funders who supported this research through their contributions to the CGIAR Trust Fund (www.cgiar.org/funders).
Banner image: Aerial view of the Noor 3 solar power plant, Ouarzazate, central Morocco. Photo: AP Photo/Abdeljalil Bounhar