The Nexus of Food, Energy and Water Supply and Security is an important (and massive!) challenge that cannot be easily addressed by one research discipline or one external stakeholder. It requires a system thinking approach to consider all the impacts of adjusting any part of the Nexus.

The supply and security of Food, Energy and Water is affected by many factors including:

• Rising global populations increasing demand.
• Rapid urbanization focusing supply on often highly overpopulated areas.
• Changing diets – particularly the move towards more meat and dairy products
• Economic growth and higher expectations.
• Climate change

Many solutions are being explored for how to improve the security and supply of Food, Energy and Water including building in resilience, exploring renewable energy, developing green infrastructures. The Nexus challenge is that these solutions can often be created in a vacuum and there are often unintended consequences of choices made about energy sources, agricultural practices, water storage systems.

The focus of our Sandpit will be on the Nexus of Food Energy and Water Security and Supply in the West Midlands area. We would like ideas to have a focus on stakeholder engagement and explore ways that we might support organisations in the West Midlands to find ways of better ensuring the supply and security of Food, Water and Energy using a Nexus System thinking approach.

What we are looking for are:

• New collaborations across different departments at Warwick
• Ways of involving external stakeholders in the West Midlands area in the co-design of projects – opening transdisciplinary bid potential.
• Ideas that ideally address Food/Water AND Energy in a system thinking manner.
• Have the potential to be further developed into external research funding proposals.

Budget

You can bid for between £1,000 and £5,000 in this submission. If you think you will need more money than this you should outline how you might spend up to £5,000 and what additional money you might need to achieve your goals. It is possible for other sources of funding to be found for proposals that are considered relevant and that show progress.