Water Security: The Water-Food-Energy-Climate Nexus by World Economic Forum

Water Security: The Water-Food-Energy-Climate Nexus by World Economic Forum
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Water Security: The Water-Food-Energy-Climate Nexus by World Economic Forum             Water security is a fundamental issue cutting across the global social, political, and economic domains. It forms an intersection of essential elements for humanity's survival, including food security, sustainable economic growth and development, energy supply, climate, and the existing and emerging security challenges facing the global economy. The mismanagement of freshwater resources worldwide is a cause for alarm that demands the implementation of effective interventional measures to secure humanity's current and future wellbeing. To this end, the World Economic Forum fostered a collaborative approach toward developing a lasting solution or at least a practical framework for continuous global engagement in averting both the existing and emerging water security risks. The organization's initiative led to the 2011 publication of a highly insightful book, Water Security: The Water-Food-Energy-Climate Nexus.             In partnership with other stakeholders from the social, economic, and political spectrum, the World Economic Forum identifies water security as a universal security threat at the center of potential global instability (World Economic Forum, 2011). According to the collaborative effort in the book, water security is attached to nearly all the identified threats to global stability, such as terrorism, inequality, famine, poverty, disease, and climate change (World Economic Forum, 2011). The organization posits that human water demand is increasing at an alarming rate that equally calls for prompt action from all the stakeholders to avert a potential global catastrophe. At the time of the book's publication, the author projected the collective the demand for water to exceed the supply by approximately 40% in two decades (World Economic Forum, 2011). The organization projected a 40% water shortage in two decades with subsequent adverse effects across the social, political, and economic domains. For instance, such a shortage would lead to global disruption in energy supply, trade constriction, escalation of food prices, the widespread undermining of authority, and the creation of refugees (World Economic Forum, 2011). Thus, this book's publication addressed the issue of water security as prompted by the outlined adverse effects of the looming global water shortage and the passive approach taken towards mitigating the same.             The proposed solutions to the issue of water sec...