Source
doi:10.1016/j.envsci.2015.08.002 — original publication (opens in a new tab; the file is not redistributed)
Summary
Biggs et al. (2015) present a critical review of the water–energy–food (WEF) nexus as a tool for sustainable development, arguing that the dominant nexus frameworks neglect the livelihood scale at which resource-use outcomes are actually decided. They review the Sustainable Livelihoods Approach (SLA) and its five capitals, critically appraise four government/multilateral nexus frameworks (SEI/Hoff 2011, FAO 2014, MuSIASEM, CLEWS) from a livelihoods perspective, then propose Environmental Livelihood Security (ELS): an integrated nexus-livelihoods framework in which 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. The framework is scale-flexible (community through region) and is demonstrated retrospectively on Cambodian (Tonle Sap) and Fijian (Lami Town) cases. For the Neobiome project its value is conceptual, not as a data feed: it is the origin of the ELS “supply versus demand balance” that underpins how NI frames self-sufficiency, and a core citation for the thesis’s FEW-nexus framing.
Key claims
See key_claims frontmatter (7 claims, all cited to source location). All are conceptual; the paper carries no quantitative benchmarks.
Neobiome Intelligence relevance
- Conceptual root of the supply/demand-balance logic. ELS defines system security as a balance between natural resource supply and human demand across water, energy and food. That is the conceptual foundation of NI’s domain-ratio metrics (ESR / WSR / FSR) and of the composite that aggregates them. It feeds the Self-Sufficiency Calculation Framework as the conceptual antecedent to the operational precedents already there: Simpson (LIT_049), Schmidt (LIT_050) and Hurtado (LIT_079). LIT_099
- Critique of macro-scale nexus frameworks (thesis). The Table 1 appraisal of the four dominant frameworks, showing each neglects local livelihood dynamics, is the argument for why a community-scale, livelihoods-centred nexus approach is needed. This is a load-bearing citation for the literature chapter and the project’s FEW-nexus central framing. LIT_099
- Internal/external factor decomposition (Fig. 4). Splitting the system into livelihoods-for-resource and resource-for-livelihoods internal factors plus external influencing factors (hazards; growth and pressures; institutions and policy) is a structural template that echoes NI’s domain-score-plus-external-gate structure. LIT_099
- ⚠ Scope. Conceptual framework paper. No quantitative values, no NZ data, nothing that feeds an NI calculation cell. It contributes framing and provenance for the nexus-livelihoods approach, not transferable numbers.
Research targets
Documents to retrieve
- Biggs et al. (2014), “Environmental Livelihood Security in South-East Asia and Oceania” (IWMI-CGIAR White Paper, Colombo, 114 pp) is the fuller primary that first defined ELS. Now held as OT_194 (ingested 2026-07-24): it adds the full ELS Figure 21 (six livelihood capitals) and a Part III primer on geospatial methods for spatially assessing ELS.
Research gaps
- None new. The aggregation and framing decisions this source informs (arithmetic vs geometric mean, access/availability decomposition) are already tracked against the composite-design targets referenced on self_sufficiency_calculation.
Connections
Links to
Sources (4): LIT_049 · LIT_050 · LIT_079 · OT_194
Concepts (1): Self-Sufficiency Calculation Framework
Referenced by
Concepts (2): Environmental Livelihood Security (FEW-Nexus +… · Self-Sufficiency Calculation Framework
Sources (1): OT_194