The need for universal metrics in the energy-water-food nexus

The ability for a new food-energy-water (FEW) initiative or program to thrive and prove valuable at a local, national, or international scale is often critically dependent not on the power or impressiveness of its technical innovation, but the ability for that innovation to be introduced, and subsequently welcomed, into a society. As the global population expands, there is an inevitable increase in competition for vital resources. The interaction of these resources—namely, food-energy-water—is referred to as the FEW Nexus. Water is the key resource that is in limited supply, and as the demand grows for energy and food dependent on it, so does global inequality and suffering. It is only through technical and socially aware innovations that these allocation issues can be addressed. Universal metrics, though flawed, are needed to help compare and contrast new FEW Nexus projects and technologies for those that need to plan and implement interventions to improve access to these vital resources. Social stickiness, or society’s willingness and ability to adopt and apply FEW Nexus interventions, is a vital component of these universal metrics. Social stickiness measures the ability of innovations to be successfully transferred from “science lab” to “social life” in order to educate and improve the global quality of existence through widespread and educated user adoption. Existing FEW program/technology metrics usually define an output per unit input (e.g., kWh/m3) and are limited to two areas the FEW Nexus with an obvious, but undefined association to the third (e.g., less water for agriculture). All technical metrics appear to treat the FEW Nexus as a static problem with no social or cultural context. Consequently, universal metrics should include a social measure of the target population as well as the traditional output/input measurements. The United Nations’ inequality-adjusted human development index (IHDI) could be a way to quickly include a social component to assess an innovation’s usability and improvement in the global community. The FEW needs and constraints found in developed and developing countries vary drastically, meaning that any universal metric that is created will not account for the complexity of the international situation, but would still be a useful tool to compare and contrast different innovations for local non-experts seeking to implement them.