Unfolding the synergy and interaction of water-land-food nexus for sustainable resource management: A supernetwork analysis

Highlights: • Water-land-food nexus among economic sectors is detected by an integrated supernetwork analysis. • Most sectors in China are resource inefficient and unsustainable. • Water-land-food nexus can gain resource saving bonus via enhancing the robustness of economy. • Similarities are observed between water and land consumption behaviors. • Food and water resource saving policies are highly likely to gain resource co-benefits. Given the large amounts of water, land, and food embodied in the trade of goods and services, a key step in decoupling extensive resource consumption from the economic system is to understand the full impact of socioeconomic development on the water-land-food nexus. This study integrates input–output analysis, ecological network analysis, and Dempster–Shafer evidence theory into a supernetwork model to detect the water-land-food nexus among economic sectors with an aim to explore effective strategic paths for resource management and to facilitate the construction of a resource-saving society. Results show that most sectors of China are resource inefficient and that all resource systems are unsustainable as reflected in the low performance of their Finn's cycling index and system robustness. Meanwhile, results of flow networks analysis show an extremely uneven land resource allocation where more than 94% of the land used in China is classified as direct agricultural land. The water-land-food nexus can gain resource saving bonus via enhancing the robustness of economy. However, the co-benefits from the nexus are negligibly small for the resource utilization efficiency. The results also indicate that the relevant resource-saving policies on food and water are highly likely to gain resource co-benefits due to their similarities in sectoral importance. Correspondingly, a set of strategic measures, including adopting a tiered resource price, deepening industrial convergence of agriculture, enhancing agriculture-food nexus, and managing water or land use from the food consumer side, are designed to build a resource-saving society. The findings of this study can provide additional insights into the impacts of the economy on the water-land-food nexus, which is beneficial for achieving an efficient and coordinated management of resources.