Agriculture

Engineering

Ecology

Biology

Food systems

Embedded system

Nexus (standard)

Archaeology

Food security

Economics

Biochemistry

Food energy

Computer science

Food science

Food processing

Water resources

Business

International trade

Geography

Environmental resource management

Water use

Environmental science

Land use

Chemistry

Natural resource economics

Ecosystem services

Ecosystem

Nature Sustainability

In the face of meeting Sustainable Development Goals for the water–food–energy–ecosystems nexus, integrated assessments are a great means to measure the impact of global change on natural resources. In this study, we evaluate the impact of climate change with the representative concentration pathway 8.5 scenario and the impact of socioeconomics with the shared socioeconomic pathway 2 scenario on land use, water consumption and food trade under four water regulation policy scenarios (invest, exploit, environment and environment+). We used the Global Biosphere Management Model and constrained it with water availability, environmental flow requirements, and water use from agriculture, industry and households (simulated using the Lund–Potsdam–Jena managed Land model, Environmental Policy Integrated Climate model and WaterGap model). Here, we show that an increase in land use by 100 Mha would be required to double food production by 2050, to meet projected food demands. International trade would need to nearly triple to meet future crop demands, with an additional 10–20% trade flow from water-abundant regions to water-scarce regions to sustain environmental flow requirements on a global scale. The challenges of meeting food, water and energy needs are interconnected, requiring integrated assessments of land use, socioeconomic policies and climate change. This study assesses the required increases in water, trade and agricultural land needed to double food production by 2050.

The global nexus of food–trade–water sustaining environmental flows by 2050