Water scarcity, land pollution, and global warming are serious challenges and crises facing the development of sustainable or green agriculture and need to be addressed using efficient and environmentally friendly management strategies. This paper proposed an integrated framework appropriate for agricultural green total factor productivity (AGTFP) assessment coupled with microscopic and mesoscopic perspectives under water-energy-food (WEF) nexus, which generated scientific and reasonable strategies for green and low-carbon agriculture from internal core factors and peripheral environmental impacts to improve green agricultural production sustainability. Taking the Lianshui irrigation district (LID) with three sub-areas as the object, internal core factors were explored by partial least squares regression (PLSR) and the external impact path through partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). Results indicated that AGTFP in LID was the smallest (0.818) compared to the three sub-areas and was in a fluctuating state. Meanwhile, AGTFP which was calculated considering undesirable outputs, was closer to tangible productivity. Resource endowments and technical facilities will promote agricultural production, desirable outputs will stimulate green production, and undesirable outputs can inhibit green production. The external influence pathway was shown to be primary environment - > secondary environment - > economic aspects - > social aspects - > AGTFP. The innovative perspectives presented in this study can facilitate preferable decisions and avoid unintended consequences for human-natural systems.

The Upper White Nile (UWN) basin plays a critical role in supporting essential ecosystem services and the livelihoods of millions of people in East Africa. The basin has been exposed to tremendous environmental pressures following high population growth, urbanisation, and land use change, all of which are compounded by the threats posed by climate change and insufficient financial and human resources. The water-energy-food-environment (WEFE) nexus provides a framework to assess solution options towards sustainable development by minimising the trade-offs between water, energy, and food resources. However, the majority of existing WEFE nexus indicators and tools tend to be developed without consideration of practitioners at the local level, thus constraining the practical application within real-world contexts. To try to address this gap and operationalise the WEFE nexus, we examined how local stakeholders frame the most pressing WEFE nexus challenges within the UWN basin, how these can be represented as indicators, and how existing WEFE nexus modelling tools could address this. The findings highlight the importance of declining water quality and aquatic ecosystem health as a result of deforestation and increasing agricultural intensity, with stakeholders expressing concerns for the uncertain impacts from climate change. Furthermore, a review of current WEFE nexus modelling tools reveals how they tend to be insufficient in addressing the most pressing environmental challenges within the basin, with a significant gap regarding the inclusion of water quality and aquatic ecosystem indicators. Subsequently, these findings are combined in order to guide the development of WEFE nexus indicators that have the potential to spatially model the trade-offs within the WEFE nexus in the UWN basin under climate change scenarios. This work provides an example of how incorporating local stakeholder\'s values and concerns can contribute to the development of meaningful indicators, that are fit-for-purpose and respond to the actual local needs.

The value of the ecosystem\'s ultimate goods and services for human welfare and long-term economic and social development is known as the gross ecosystem product (GEP). For the study of GEP accounting, the suggested water-energy-food (WEF) nexus offers a fresh viewpoint. This work aims to build a GEP accounting index system based on WEF, investigate its spatio-temporal evolution characteristics, and assess trade-offs and synergies between and within the water, energy, and food subsystems. Using the Three Gorges Reservoir area (TGRA) as an illustration, the findings revealed that, firstly, the comprehensive benefit of GEP based on WEF showed an upward trend in TGRA. Still, it was worth noting that the total production of the food ecosystem decreased. Secondly, the GEP based on WEF in five periods showed a spatial pattern of \"high east and west, low middle.\" Thirdly, the Pearson correlation coefficient indicated that the GEP trade-off relationships based on WEF were dominant in TGRA, with the strongest trade-offs between AQV, SCV, APV, and LEV. In addition, in bivariate local spatial autocorrelation, the value of the six ecosystem service function relationships was dominated by the trade-off relationship, and the distribution of trade-offs and synergies showed significant heterogeneity at the county scale in the TGRA. Finally, hot spot analysis showed that the hot spots of the gross water and energy ecosystem products were scattered in the tail area of the study area. In contrast, the hot spots of the gross food ecosystem product were concentrated in the belly region. The findings of this study provided a basis for the scientific formulation of territorial spatial pattern optimization for water, energy, and agricultural resources in the TGRA and can more accurately reflect the status of the ecological environment and changes of WEF over time. Moreover, this paper also gives full play to the growth advantages of shipping and aquatic products, implements effective soil erosion prevention and control measures, and establishes water-saving mechanisms and other measures in terms of water resources. Subregional plans for industrial structure and strengthening of waste gas and wastewater treatment facilities regarding energy resources are developed. Implement the cultivated land protection system and promote the superiority of crop varieties and other measures in terms of food resources.

As representative of the water-energy-food nexus, fossil fuel development and industrial agriculture are rural industries that continue to expand and increasingly occur in the same areas. Being a top agricultural export county and the fossil fuel capital of California while ranking among the worst in the US for industrial pollution, Kern County is a poster child of rural nexus development and, thus, an essential place for initiating sustainability transitions. Such transitions rely on policy support and the adoption of methods by individuals and communities who may disagree with such changes. While sense of place and impact perceptions are recognized as playing critical roles in sustainability management, they have yet to be utilized in nexus research. A survey (N = 256) of the perceived impacts of nexus industries with place meaning and place attachment as possible drivers for perceptions was conducted in nexus industry pollution exposure risk zones. Factor analysis and bivariate correlations showed that place meaning and place attachment are drivers for perceptions while also being drivers for concern for changes in nexus industries. While perceptions of impacts indicated contested place meanings, participants strongly perceive the economy and environment as being in decline. To build support for sustainability policy, directing funds from Kern County\'s renewable energy industry to local sectors of society, implementation of regenerative agriculture, cooperative management, and nurturing place meaning as aligned with nature\'s restorative quality are important paths forward. These nexus management foci could strengthen place attachment, build trust in government, and repair environmental alienation.

Adequate water, electricity, and food are essential for sustainable development. Regional conflicts intensified by global water, energy, and food shortages necessitate a rethinking of the security and interdependence of these resources. However, most earlier scholars concentrated on the subsystems of the water-energy-food nexus (WEF nexus), lacking holistic studies. Therefore, to understand the history and current state of research on the WEF nexus and predict future research directions, this study analyzed 1313 journal articles from the Web of Science database between 2007 and 2022 using the bibliometric analysis and Citespace software. The findings in this study indicate that (1) the progress of the WEF nexus research can be classified into three stages between 2007 and 2022: the early stage (2007-2010), the fast-developing stage (2011-2015), and the steady and in-depth stage (2016-2022). The WEF nexus has become a hot zone for academic research. (2) Map of the network of countries, institutions, and author collaborations implies tight academic collaboration among countries, institutions, and writers. (3) Climate change, integrated WEF nexus, sustainable development, and security are research hotspots in this field. Meanwhile, energy security, circular economy, and resource allocation are advanced subjects in this field. These key findings can provide managers and researchers with valuable information for decision-making.

For centuries, desalination, in one way or another, has helped alleviate water scarcity. Over time, desalination has gone through an evolutionary process influenced largely by available contemporary technology. This improvement, for the most part, was reflected in the energy efficiency and, in turn, in terms of the cost-effectiveness of this practice. Thanks to such advancements, by the 1960s, the desalination industry experienced notable exponential growth, becoming a formidable option to supplement conventional water resources with a reliable non-conventional resource. That said, often, there are pressing associated issues, most notably environmental, socioeconomic, health, and relatively recently, agronomic concerns. Such reservations raise the question of whether desalination is indeed a sustainable solution to current water supply problems. This is exceptionally important to understand in light of the looming water and food crises. This paper, thus, tends to review these potential issues from the sustainability perspective. It is concluded that the aforementioned issues are indeed major concerns, but they can be mitigated by actions that consider the local context. These may be either prophylactic, proactive measures that require careful planning to tailor the situation to best fit a given region or reactive measures such as incorporating pre- (e.g., removing particles, debris, microorganisms, suspended solids, and silt from the intake water prior to the desalination process) and post-treatments (e.g., reintroducing calcium and magnesium ions to water to enhance its quality for irrigation purposes) to target specific shortcomings of desalination.

Agricultural crops are the primary food source because livestock and poultry products also indirectly depend on crops. A significant obstacle to adopting the water, food, and energy (WFE) nexus is the lack of a comprehensive and easy-to-use simulation model for the food subsystem focusing on crops. By reviewing the articles in Scopus and Google Scholar databases, WFE nexus studies can be divided into two categories: simulation-based and conceptual-based studies of WFE nexus. Based on the developmental perspective on food subsystem modeling in the WFE nexus, the conceptual studies were excluded, and the modeling studies were reviewed. Two points of view can be used for WFE nexus modeling: 1. hard-link modeling and 2. soft-link modeling. Comparing these two types of modeling showed that hard-link modeling cannot model the interrelations of the food subsystem, and this shortcoming is of great importance. This study reviewed the crop growth models (CGMs) used in the WFE nexus system from the development perspective. The technical characteristics of the CGMs have been evaluated according to the requirements of the CGMs. Finally, a checklist based on the criteria defined for the nexus system has been provided, which can guide researchers in choosing the appropriate CGMs for the food subsystem with the nexus approach. The analysis revealed that none of the CGMs studied alone were sufficient to develop a simulation model for the food subsystem with the WFE nexus. However, the AquaCrop model met more criteria.

Water, energy and food are inextricably linked in agricultural system. Social and environmental issues arising from socio-economic development pose new challenges for sustainable agricultural development. Achieving sustainable agriculture from the perspective of water, energy and food resource conservation is of critical importance to the national strategy for high-quality development of the Yellow River Basin in China. In this study, the mass productivity and economic productivity of water and energy in agricultural system were considered, and an integrated assessment index system for agricultural system based on the Water-Energy-Food Nexus (WEFN) was proposed in three dimensions: reliability, coordination and resilience. Based on these indicators, the agricultural water-energy-food nexus index (AWEFNI) and integrated risk index (IRI) were performed to assess the current status of agricultural development in the middle and upper reaches of the Yellow River. Results indicate that the AWEFNI in the middle and upper reaches of the Yellow River is increasing year by year, and the level of sustainable agricultural development is improving, but the overall level is lower. The AWEFNI values vary widely among provinces. The reliability of single subsystem in the study area accounts for more than 1/3 of the AWEFNI, with poor water endowment， rich food and energy resource endowments, the coordination of the AWEFN is weakening. The resilience of the third subsystem is gradually declining. The contradiction in water and energy supply and demand in Ningxia is the most prominent among the five provinces, and the level of AWEFN development is the lowest, so the regulation policies should be implemented as soon as possible to promote the synergistic development of AWEFN around the region.

\'Quantity-type\' water shortages and \'quality-type\' water shortages are important factors that constrain the security and coordinated development of regional water-energy-food nexus (WEFN) system, especially in arid areas where water is scarce. Therefore, it is of great significance to accurately identify the coupling and mutual feedback effects of the WEFN on different types of water resources demand. This information can be used to understand the regional WEFN and alleviate pressure on regional water resources. In this study, a new relationship diagram of the WEFN system was formed with the incorporation of the water footprint (WF), which can characterize a system\'s water demand, water source type, water pollution amount and pollution type. Based on this nexus, a WEFN system feedback model suitable for arid regions was established using the system dynamics approach. Taking Ningxia, China, as a case study, six future scenarios were designed, and the development trends of the WEFN system under different development scenarios were simulated to explore the impact of different policies on the WEFN. Finally, practical suggestions to promote the synergistic development of WEFN systems were proposed. The results indicate that the rational distinction between \'quantity-type\' and \'quality-type\' water resources can effectively alleviate the regional water stress and promote the coordinated development of water, energy and food. And the water security is the main factor that constrains the coordinated development of the WEFN system in Ningxia. Incorporating water environmental pollution policies into the water subsystem is necessary. Furthermore, the resource saving scenario and energy production restructuring adjustment scenario can effectively alleviate the energy security problems that has resulted from rapid economic development. In addition, Ningxia urgently needs to optimize its food production structure to address a continuous reduction in the food security index.

Growing food demand challenges the expansion of agriculture, while water and energy shortages have seriously jeopardized agricultural sustainability. Therefore, the water-energy-food (WEF) nexus must be integrated into sustainable agriculture management. However, despite the increasing sophistication of models for WEF optimization, more studies have considered only how to reduce resource consumption and less on how to increase resource supply. This paper outlines an agricultural WEF optimization model based on photovoltaic panel rainwater harvesting (PVRH). The model innovatively incorporates the PVRH system into the agricultural WEF nexus, providing a decision-making framework that exploits and conserves resources in parallel, while contributing to economic benefits. The model was applied in a rural case study in a semi-arid region of China. The results highlight the significant potential of the PVRH system to exploit water and energy, and the increased resources are allocated to irrigated alfalfa and vegetables, which would significantly increase revenue. However, the model does not recommend large-scale vegetable cultivation, which would increase water and energy consumption and reduce the WEF indicator values indicating agricultural sustainability. The final scheme will build a 98.92MWp PV power station, develop 1.31 × 108 kW·h of electricity and 1.97 × 107 m3 of rainwater into agricultural production. And through cropping restructuring, it will increase 23.61 % of economic revenue and save 57.74 % of water and 3.24 % of energy. In general, the model framework is transferable and applicable to similar agricultural areas under semi-arid climatic conditions.