NEXus Thinking for sustainable AGricultural development in Andean countries (NEXT-AG)

Food security is consistently seen as one of the key global challenges for the coming decades. Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), currently representing 13% of total food trade, could contribute to solving this challenge given its comparative advantage in terms of water and land availability. Agricultural exports and increasing global food demand represent a big opportunity for the economic development of LAC countries. In the last decades, governments have designed programmes, regulations and institutions aimed at increasing agricultural productivity in countries like Ecuador and Peru. However, there is some evidence of this agricultural expansion already causing some environmental problems (e.g. aquifer overexploitation) and impacts on sectors competing for the same resources (energy). Getting the Water-Energy-Food-Environment (WEFE) nexus right is crucial for LAC countries to ensure the sustainable development of agriculture and the economy without compromising natural resources availability for present and future generations. NEXT-AG's aim is to provide policymakers in those countries with the needed evidence base that allows them to develop new coordinated policies and programmes for increasing resilience and promoting sustainable economic growth in the context of increasing national and global food demand.

The project has five main areas: 1) Data collection; 2) Policy and institutional mapping; 3) Modelling and integration; 4) Dissemination and outreach; 5) Project management. The core part of the project is the modelling of the different components of the WEFE nexus, done in collaboration with stakeholders, and their integration, which results will form the needed evidence base to inform future agricultural policies. Specifically, the project team will 1) collect and synthesise evidence on available water and energy resources and their use in agriculture and interaction with other sectors, showing key dependencies and trade-offs, and how the most relevant national policies and development plans might be influencing those links; 2) develop a participatory modelling framework to study the trade-offs between food production and key biophysical and environmental nexus components under contrasting climate, policy and socio-economic scenarios; 3) inform policymaking on how to better integrate nexus thinking into future coordinated policies and development strategies. The outcomes of the project will not only be relevant for Andean countries, but for other developing countries where food exports are one of the key economic activities.

The project will deliver new theoretical and conceptual understanding of the impacts of agricultural expansion in the context of the Water-Energy-Food-Environment nexus in Andean countries. The immediate beneficiaries of this research will be the policymakers and stakeholders in Peru and Ecuador that will actively participate in this project (e.g., Ministry of Agriculture in Ecuador, National Water Agency in Peru, agribusiness, agricultural levy boards), contributing to the policy mapping exercise, the development of the modelling activities and policy scenarios to consider. Besides, the training activities planned as part of the NEXT-AG project will impact on the capacity of policymakers and practitioners. They will learn how the different models and their integration could be used in the future to inform the design of new integrated policies that take account of the trade-offs of agricultural expansion.

The outputs of the NEXT-AG project will impact on future agricultural policies and irrigation expansion programmes in the two countries under study (Ecuador and Peru). In the long term, the outcomes of this research would encourage more sustainable agricultural expansion policies, without compromising the availability of natural resources for future generations and ensuring sustainable development and economic growth. The main policy recommendations could be also applied to other developing countries experiencing similar issues regarding agricultural expansion to meet international food demand and its impacts on available natural resources. At the global level, this research will contribute to achieving food security, one of the biggest challenges of the coming future. Direct beneficiaries at a global level will also be the academic and research communities building on the conceptual and methodological advances delivered through the project.

A range of communication and engagement techniques and platforms have been identified to engage with all beneficiaries (see work package 4 in the Case for Support, and Pathway to Impacts attachment). These include: newsletters for project partners, workshops and focus group in the case study areas, annual meetings, blog posts, academic journal papers, conference presentations, twitter account.