Purpose
This page is the conceptual home of the water-energy-food (FEW/WEF) nexus + livelihoods framing that runs through both Neobiome outputs. It states why Neobiome Intelligence measures self-sufficiency as a balance of resource supply against human demand across water, energy and food, and it collects the evidence lineage for that framing. The calculation mechanics that operationalise it (the ESR / WSR / FSR domain ratios and the composite that aggregates them) live in self_sufficiency_calculation; this page is the framing layer above them.
Per the project’s two-framework design, the FEW nexus is the project’s operational framing (the engine computes domain ratios), distinct from Bustamin’s conceptual SSI. The novelty claim sits on the instrument, never on the framework.
The framework: Environmental Livelihood Security (ELS)
Environmental Livelihood Security (ELS) was coined by Biggs et al. by integrating the Sustainable Livelihoods Approach with the water-energy-food nexus. A system is secure when a balance is achieved between human demand on the environment and environmental impacts on humans across water, energy and food, holding an equilibrium between livelihood pressures (e.g. population growth, urbanisation) and environmental pressures (e.g. climate change, natural hazards). OT_194
The framework (OT_194 Figure 21) couples two lenses:
- an environment nexus lens over climate-food-energy-water securities, and
- a livelihoods asset lens over the livelihood capitals (natural, physical, human, social, financial, political) plus vulnerability, transforming processes and outcomes,
balanced at the centre by ELS, which mediates Human Demand against Natural Supply. That supply-versus-demand balance is the conceptual root of NI’s domain-ratio logic and of the composite that aggregates the domains. OT_194 LIT_099
Evidence lineage
| Source | Role in the framing |
|---|---|
| OT_194 | Biggs et al. (2014) IWMI White Paper (114 pp). The primary: full ELS conceptualization, the complete Figure 21, and a Part III primer on geospatial / Earth-observation methods for spatially assessing ELS at sub-national resolution. |
| LIT_099 | Biggs et al. (2015) journal article. The condensed version; critical review of the four dominant nexus frameworks (Hoff/SEI, FAO, MuSIASEM, CLEWS) showing each neglects the livelihood scale. |
| LIT_049 | WEF Nexus Index. A national-scale operational precedent (JRC:COIN composite; access/availability decomposition; arithmetic-mean aggregation). |
| LIT_050 | FEW four-component community-scale assessment (availability / access / quality / preference). Field-tested, off-grid rural Alaska. |
| LIT_079 | WEFE causal-nexus modelling (Group Model Building + network analysis). Structural precedent; corroborates non-substitutability. |
(All five sources are linked under Related pages below.)
Relevance to Neobiome Intelligence
- Supply/demand balance is the conceptual root of the domain ratios. ELS’s balance of natural supply against human demand is exactly what ESR (energy), WSR (water) and FSR (food) measure at the community scale. See self_sufficiency_calculation for the formulas.
- Sub-national, fine-resolution assessment is NI’s premise. OT_194’s Part III argues credible resource-security assessment must move away from national-boundary indices toward fine-resolution, spatially explicit data. That is precisely NI’s coordinate-first, per-site approach. Its method families (cropland mapping, evapotranspiration, precipitation, crop yield from vegetation indices, VGI) are framing for NI’s GIS layer choices, though NI uses NZ layers rather than the global/tropical datasets the paper surveys.
- Non-substitutability supports the geometric mean. The nexus literature (LIT_079’s sparse causal network; LIT_050’s quality/preference axes) corroborates treating the domains as non-substitutable, the argument behind NI’s geometric-mean composite (as opposed to Simpson’s compensatory arithmetic mean).
- Indicator caution supports the community scale. “No neat, simple algorithm” exists for measuring sustainable livelihoods, and macro-indicators miss community-scale status and priorities, so disaggregated, community-scale indices are needed. OT_194
Mapping to SSI / EDT
The FEW nexus maps to the three resource EDT domains and the resource-security SSI indicators:
| Nexus domain | EDT domain | SSI indicator |
|---|---|---|
| Energy | D01 | I07 (basic needs, energy leg) |
| Food | D02 | I02 (food security) |
| Water | D03 | I07 (basic needs, water leg); I09 (environmental) |
The livelihoods half of ELS (the six capitals) spans the wider SSI set, which NI treats through the Tier-2 composite assessment described in self_sufficiency_calculation.
Scope
Conceptual and methodological framing only. No value on this page is an NI calculation input; the numbers and formulas live in self_sufficiency_calculation. The FEW-nexus family currently rests on five sources (OT_194, LIT_099, LIT_049, LIT_050, LIT_079); this page is the shared frame they populate.
Related pages
- self_sufficiency_calculation — the calculation mechanics (ESR/WSR/FSR, composite aggregation)
- edt_ssi_convergence — the EDT-to-SSI convergence map
- edt_framework — the 10 EDT domains
- Sources: ot_194_biggs-2014-els-se-asia-oceania · lit_099_biggs-2015-els-nexus-livelihoods · lit_049_simpson-2022-wef-nexus-index · lit_050_schmidt-2022-few-security-rural-alaska · lit_079_hurtado-2024-wefe-nexus-modeling
Connections
Links to
Sources (5): LIT_049 · LIT_050 · LIT_079 · LIT_099 · OT_194
Concepts (3): EDT Framework — Emerging & Disruptive Technolo… · EDT–SSI Convergence · Self-Sufficiency Calculation Framework
Referenced by
Concepts (1): Self-Sufficiency Calculation Framework