Approach on water-energy-food (WEF) nexus and climate change: A tool in decision-making processes

Climate change has influenced the demand for natural resources, such as water, energy, and food. This study aimed to analyse the relationship between the Water-Energy-Food (WEF) nexus and climate change through a review and analysis of scientific publications to discern trends towards sustainability. The methodology adopted in this study involved i) selection, processing, and merging of databases; ii) a bibliometric analysis; and iii) a systematic literature review using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses methods. The findings of this study reflect a strong relationship between the WEF nexus and sustainability influenced by climate change, which highlights the need to balance natural resource availability, growing population demand, and productive activities in a given territory. The bibliometric analysis performed in this study included interactions between the WEF nexus and climate change by considering 1,220 scientific publications from the Scopus and Web of Science databases that covered policy, sustainability, management, and governance aspects. Based on five keyword clusters of the WEF nexus, climate change, and sustainability, it also extracted the research directions from the systematic literature review of 104 documents. This study summarises the interest in the WEF nexus and highlights that the utilization and management of the natural resources of a region so as to balance the WEF nexus and climate change is among the most significant challenges of the 21st century.