Evaluation of Nexus-Sustainability and Conventional Approaches for Optimal Water-Energy-Land-Crop Planning in an Irrigated Canal Command

With the increasing threat to water, energy, and food resources world-wide, it is highly imperative to manage these resources sustainably. This study develops an optimal crop area allocation model based on a novel nexus-sustainability index (NSI), integrating the water use, energy use (environmental dimension); land use, labour use (social dimension); yield return, and per capita food production (economic dimension) indicators in agricultural food production. This NSI-based model is evaluated in a reservoir-canal command for optimal water and energy uses and, subsequently, compared with the conventional models of Net-Economic Return (NER), Water-Food (W-F) nexus, and Energy-Food (E-F) nexus based approaches using multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) analysis. The comparative results revealed that the NSI-based model is the best that could save water, energy and labour resources by 36.82(±1.91)%, 23.72(±2.47)%, and 2.29(±0.16)% during the Kharif season; and 17.5(±0.59)%, 19.82(±1.52)%, and 2.02(±0.42)% during the Rabi season as compared to the existing condition, respectively, enhancing the net economic return by 56.53(±3.28)% and 79.96(±2.97)% during the corresponding seasons, respectively. Finally, it is advocated that the NSI-based approach could manage the water and energy resources sustainably ensuring security in the local water-energy-land-food (WELF) nexus.