A well-coordinated and integrated nexus approach offers opportunities to build resilient systems while harmonising interventions, mitigating trade-offs and hence improving sustainability . This can be achieved through greater resource mobilisation and coordination, policy convergence across sectors and targeting nexus points in the broader landscape . Studies utilising the nexus approach to climate change in different places show considerably different results. In the southern African region, climate change is already affecting water-energy-food resources and exerting further pressure on already scarce resources. It is proposed that adaptation can be achieved through cross-sectoral management of resources, by adopting water management practices, aiming to produce more food and energy with less water resources and adopting cleaner and renewable sources of energy. This will result in saving water and ensuring energy security in a region that depends on hydro and coal energy sources . Applying the nexus approach to the Hindu Kush Himalayan region identified three challenges: increasing population and declining agricultural land, stagnating or declining food production and increasingly water- and energy-intensive food production despite water and energy scarcity . Nexus smart adaptation policies need to be complemented with system-wide adaptation, policy coherence and sectoral coordination that targets poverty and vulnerability linkages .
IPCC
Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability
IPCC Report