Quantifying Sustainable Land-Water-Energy-Food Nexus: The Case of Sustainable Livelihoods in an East African Rift Valley

The sustainable management of Land-Water-Energy-Food (LWEF) nexus requires an environmental characterization that allows the comparison of complex interlinkages between nexus resources and livelihoods. This complexity makes this characterization difficult coupled with limited study in quantifying sustainability of LWEF nexus and its linkage with livelihood. Therefore, the present study aimed to investigate the link between sustainable LWEF nexus and livelihoods. In order to address the objective the proposed methodology starts with a detailed identification of LWEF and livelihood indicators which depicts well-defined, shared, and holistic methods to evaluate sustainability. With this we used analytical hierarchy process and pair wise comparison matrix in combination with weighting model. The result of composite LWEF nexus index was 0.083 representing, low sustainability. Besides, this composite index implies the use and management of LWEF nexus resources in the study area is very low, as the composite index approach to 1, the use and management of nexus resources are in a good condition which characterized by sustainability. This could be linked with nexus resources consumption, use, and management. From the analysis of the weight of land, water, energy and food nexus resources, the highest weight was observed for food. The focus of on food production only shows no clear synergy on provisioning, supporting or regulating nexus resources to address livelihoods. The result further showed that LWEF nexus resources have strong correlation with livelihoods. This was evidenced by social (r > 0.8, p < 0.01), natural (r > 0.3, p < 0.05) and physical (r > 0.6, p < 0.01) livelihood indicators showed strong positive correlation with LWEF nexus resources. Based on the finding of the study, it was observed that managing nexus resources not only provide a significant contribution to achieve sustainable LWEF nexus, but also be effective for enhancing livelihood through food security. This could be attained by strong evidence based policy to ensure sustainable use of nexus resources. The results provided by this study would serve as the foundation for future study, policy formulation and implementation.