Research priorities for managing the impacts and dependencies of business upon food, energy, water and the environment.

Delivering access to sufficient food, energy and water resources to ensure human wellbeing is a major concern for governments worldwide. However, it is crucial to account for the 'nexus' of interactions between these natural resources and the consequent implications for human wellbeing. The private sector has a critical role in driving positive change towards more sustainable nexus management and could reap considerable benefits from collaboration with researchers to devise solutions to some of the foremost sustainability challenges of today. Yet opportunities are missed because the private sector is rarely involved in the formulation of deliverable research priorities. We convened senior research scientists and influential business leaders to collaboratively identify the top forty questions that, if answered, would best help companies understand and manage their food-energy-water-environment nexus dependencies and impacts. Codification of the top order nexus themes highlighted research priorities around development of pragmatic yet credible tools that allow businesses to incorporate nexus interactions into their decision-making; demonstration of the business case for more sustainable nexus management; identification of the most effective levers for behaviour change; and understanding incentives or circumstances that allow individuals and businesses to take a leadership stance. Greater investment in the complex but productive relations between the private sector and research community will create deeper and more meaningful collaboration and cooperation.

A Footprint Family extended MRIO model to support Europe's transition to a One Planet Economy.

Currently, the European economy is using nearly three times the ecological assets that are locally available. This situation cannot be sustained indefinitely. Tools are needed that can help reverse the unsustainable trend. In 2010, an EC funded One Planet Economy Network: Europe (OPEN:EU) project was launched to develop the evidence and innovative practical tools that will allow policy-makers and civil society to identify policy interventions to transform Europe into a One Planet Economy, by 2050. Building on the premise that no indicator alone is able to comprehensively monitor (progress towards) sustainability, the project has drawn on the Ecological, Carbon and Water Footprints to define a Footprint Family suite of indicators, to track human pressure on the planet. An environmentally-extended multi-regional input-output (MRIO) model has then been developed to group the Footprint Family under a common framework and combine the indicators in the family with national economic accounts and trade statistics. Although unable to monitor the full spectrum of human pressures, once grouped within the MRIO model, the Footprint Family is able to assess the appropriation of ecological assets, GHG emissions as well as freshwater consumption and pollution associated with consumption of specific products and services within a specified country. Using MRIO models within the context of Footprint analyses also enables the Footprint Family to take into account full production chains with technologies specific to country of origin.

Carbon, land, and water footprint accounts for the European Union: consumption, production, and displacements through international trade.

A nation's consumption of goods and services causes various environmental pressures all over the world due to international trade. We use a multiregional input-output model to assess three kinds of environmental footprints for the member states of the European Union. Footprints are indicators that take the consumer responsibility approach to account for the total direct and indirect effects of a product or consumption activity. We quantify the total environmental pressures (greenhouse gas emissions: carbon footprint; appropriation of biologically productive land and water area: land footprint; and freshwater consumption: water footprint) caused by consumption in the EU. We find that the consumption activities by an average EU citizen in 2004 led to 13.3 tCO(2)e of induced greenhouse gas emissions, appropriation of 2.53 gha (hectares of land with global-average biological productivity), and consumption of 179 m(3) of blue water (ground and surface water). By comparison, the global averages were 5.7 tCO(2)e, 1.23 gha, and 163 m(3) blue water, respectively. Overall, the EU displaced all three types of environmental pressures to the rest of the world, through imports of products with embodied pressures. Looking at intra-EU displacements only, the UK was the most important displacer overall, while the largest net exporters of embodied environmental pressures were Poland (greenhouse gases), France (land), and Spain (freshwater).