Applying the FEW Nexus in Rural Alaska: Concept vs. Reality

Abstract:

The food-energy-water (FEW) nexus is commonly used to describe interactions that yield gains or tradeoffs among those domains, with implications for sustainability. We attempted to apply this concept when examining the implications of renewable energy usage in rural Alaska communities, expecting that the FEW nexus would provide a powerful conceptual and analytical framework for identifying and quantifying the benefits of renewable energy to FEW security. To our surprise, we found only some interactions involving two of the three domains and none that substantively involved all three. Instead, we found that other factors such as transportation and governance play a major role in determining FEW security outcomes in rural Alaska. Here we show the implications of our findings for theory and practice, noting limitations of the FEW nexus concept but benefits to thinking in terms of interactions across domains. Specifically, we find that cross-domain considerations are essential for long-term sustainability. Our examples from rural Alaska do not negate the utility of the FEW nexus elsewhere, but call attention to the dangers of narrow or rigid applications of such concepts. With a modest amount of intellectual effort, we could think up many potential nexus interactions within our partner communities, but in practice few of these putative connections offered much value to practitioners and providers of FEW securities in the communities. Our partners instead drew our attention to the constraints on FEW security that were most pressing in their views, such as limitations on traditional food harvesting practices or cancellation of ferry service to a community off the road system. While a universal FEW nexus concept may be elusive or impractical, the underlying ideas of cross-domain interactions need greater attention, in context- and site-specific ways, to yield benefits to practitioners and their communities.