Food, energy and water demand integrated approach

T.V. Padma in SciDev.net: Improvements in food, energy and water sectors need to be tackled together in an integrated manner to address climate change impacts, says Rajendra Kumar Pachauri, chair of the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

“I hope people will understand the integration of food, energy and water (sectors). Each one of these has to be seen as part of the whole,” Pachauri tells SciDev.Net ahead of the Delhi Sustainable Development Summit, being organised by The Energy and Resources Research Institute this week (6—8 February).

Pachauri observed that as populations and incomes continue to grow, the demand on the three sectors was also growing, calling for efficient use of resources in all three areas and attention to the technological and economic issues linked to them.

“I think that what we hope to do is ensure that all these three (sectors) are seen as the integrated elements of a much larger complex. And I think that we would have to make sure that each one of these is seen in terms of how developments are going to take place in the future,” he said. He cited as examples of the inter-linkages among the three areas as the fact that energy was needed to provide water for irrigation and how water was needed to carry out any agriculture.

Lisa Grande, United Nations Development programme (UNDP's) resident representative in India, said in a message that food, energy and water security were the greatest challenges facing India, and the "magnitude of these problems is serious"....

"Abundance" by Rubens