Assessing performance of crop producers from Water-Energy-Food-Environment Nexus perspective: A composite indicator approach.

Among all the economic sectors, agricultural production is characterised by intensive natural resource use and a noticeable environmental footprint. The assessment of farm performance has been receiving special attention given the increasing scarcity of natural resources and growing environmental concerns. The nexus approach is particularly useful for such types of analysis since it reflects the complex interconnections among the sectors of water, energy, food and environment (WEFE). One way to explicitly place agricultural production within the WEFE Nexus is to develop a composite indicator at the level of decision-maker - farm - that will reflect the interlinkages between agricultural production and the Nexus pillars of water, energy and environment. Our study aims to operationalise the WEFE Nexus in the agricultural sector and contributes to the existing literature in two main directions: we propose a methodology to calculate the farm-level WEFE Nexus composite indicator using endogenous weights for aggregation, and our composite indicator incorporates the environment component reflecting how the environment and agricultural production interact. Furthermore, we developed an interactive web application that calculates the WEFE Nexus composite indicator values based on uploaded farm-level data (available at: https://sigmanexus.shinyapps.io/sigmanexus/). Our analysis of olive producers in Crete reveals moderate performance from a WEFE Nexus perspective. The average WEFE Nexus composite indicator value stands at 0.74, ranging between 0 and 1. Farmers who produce olives in an environmentally friendly manner and those who are concerned with the negative consequences of climate change tend to perform better from the WEFE Nexus perspective. Thus, the adoption of sustainable intensification activities and climate-smart practices, such as fertigation and pressure-compensated drippers, is recommended to enhance further the olive producers' performance. Monitoring the subsequent changes in farm performance can be achieved through the utilization of the developed methodological approach and the web tool launched as part of this study.

Socio-economic or environmental benefits from pondscapes? Deriving stakeholder preferences using analytic hierarchy process and compositional data analysis.

Ponds occupy a large share of standing water worldwide and play an important role in providing various ecosystem services. There are concerted efforts of the European Union either to create new ponds, or to restore and preserve existing ponds as nature-based solutions to provide benefits to ecosystem and human well-being. As part of the EU PONDERFUL project, selected pondscapes (i.e. landscapes of ponds) in eight different countries - hereafter "demo-sites", are studied to comprehensively understand their characteristics and their efficiency to provide ecosystem services. In addition, the needs and knowledge of stakeholders who own, work, research, or benefit from the pondscapes are also important, because of their capabilities to create, manage and develop the pondscapes. Therefore, we established connection with stakeholders to study their preferences and visions on the pondscapes. Using the analytic hierarchy process, this study shows that in general stakeholders in the European and Turkish demo-sites prefer environmental benefits to economic benefits, while stakeholders in the Uruguayan demo-sites rank the economic benefits higher. More specifically, in the European and Turkish demo-sites, the biodiversity benefits, i.e. life-cycle maintenance, habitat and gene pool protection, receive the highest ranking among all groups. On the other hand, stakeholders at the Uruguayan demo-sites rank provisioning benefits as the most important, because many ponds in Uruguayan demo-sites are being used for agricultural purposes. Understanding those preferences helps policy makers to address the needs of stakeholders more correctly, when considering any action or policy for the pondscapes.

Implementing a combined Delphi and Focus Group qualitative methodology in Nexus research designs-The case of the WEFE Nexus in Apokoronas, Crete.

In recent years, researchers and policymakers have emphasised the importance of understanding the complex relationships between Water, Energy, Food and Ecosystems (WEFE). The primary reason for capturing these complexities is to understand how decisions made in the water, food and energy sectors can affect one another. Crucially, biodiversity and ecosystem services (E) play a mediating role in these relationships by making material and non-material contributions to all other sectors (W, E, F). The Nexus approach has been widely used for capturing these interdependencies and identifying opportunities for increasing efficiency, reducing trade-offs and building synergies for sustainable resource use across the WEFE nodes. One challenge in using this framework is the need to harmonise the technical and managerial dimensions of the WEFE interlinkages with the perceptions and priorities of local populations directly involved in the use and management of resources. This paper presents a methodological framework that seeks to integrate the perspectives of experts, practitioners and local stakeholders on the WEFE Nexus through the combined application of the Delphi and Focus Group methods. In this paper, the municipality of Apokoronas in Crete, Greece has served as the case in point. The combined framework allowed us to explore the Nexus understanding at the local level and was instrumental in the identification of initiatives for more integrated resource management. The triangulation of results captured the differences in priorities between practitioners and the local community at large, but also, more specifically, it pointed to discrepancies within groups and across WEFE sectors. The outcomes of this paper demonstrate that awareness and learning play a central role in Nexus actions to overcome conflicts and perceived inequalities, and to internalise solutions. The inclusion of the ecosystems node in the traditional WEF Nexus encouraged participants to contemplate the pivotal role of ecosystems in supporting the rest of the WEF sectors.

A review on risk assessment in managed aquifer recharge.

Managed aquifer recharge (MAR) refers to a suite of methods that is increasingly being applied worldwide for sustainable groundwater management to tackle drinking or irrigation water shortage or to restore and maintain groundwater ecosystems. The potential for MAR is far from being exhausted, not only due to geological and hydrogeological conditions or technical and economic feasibility but also due to its lack of acceptance by the public and policymakers. One approach to enable the safe and accepted use of MAR could be to provide comprehensive risk management, including the identification, analysis, and evaluation of potential risks related to MAR. This article reviews current MAR risk assessment methodologies and guidelines and summarizes possible hazards and related processes. It may help planners and operators select the appropriate MAR risk assessment approaches and support the risk identification process. In addition to risk assessment (and subsequent risk treatment) related to the MAR implementation phase, this review also addresses risk assessment for MAR operation. We also highlight the limitations and lessons learned from the application and development of risk assessment methodologies. Moreover, developments are recommended in the area of MAR-related risk assessment methodologies and regulation. Depending on data availability, collected methodologies may be applicable for MAR sites worldwide. Integr Environ Assess Manag 2022;18:1513-1529. © 2022 The Authors. Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Society of Environmental Toxicology & Chemistry (SETAC).