An apple is worth seventy litres of water. And other things we cannot see

It takes seventy litres of water to produce an apple. Fifty for an orange, thirty-five litres for a cup of tea. These are figures that nobody thinks about when doing their shopping, yet they reveal a truth that the latest issue of World Energy, Eni’s magazine dedicated to major issues in energy and geopolitics, highlights: when we import food, we also import the ‘hidden water’ used to produce it. Economists call it ‘virtual water’, and it is just one of the many invisible connections linking three resources that we are accustomed to thinking of as separate: water, energy and food.

The issue is entitled “Energy, Food, Water Nexus” and begins with a clear thesis, summarised in Rita Lofano’s editorial: security in the 21st century no longer depends solely on military strength, but on the ability to guarantee reliable supplies of these three resources. Today’s maps of power follow the course of rivers, the routes of oil tankers and food supply chains.

A system without governance?

The argument put forward by Moisés Naím, Distinguished Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment and a member of the editorial board of *We*, is that water, energy and food represent “a single system of interdependencies that modern governance stubbornly refuses to manage as such”. And highly interconnected systems, he warns, do not fail gradually: they collapse suddenly. A drought reduces water supplies, cuts hydroelectric power generation, causes electricity prices to soar, restricts irrigation, drives up food prices and forces governments to take drastic measures. What begins as a climatic event turns into a political crisis.

The figures underpinning this argument, compiled in an essay by Bassel Daher and Rabi H. Mohtar, researchers at Texas A&M University, illustrate the scale of the pressure: by 2050, demand for water will grow by 20–30 per cent, demand for energy by around 50 per cent, and demand for food by 50–60 per cent. Already today, agriculture accounts for almost 70 per cent of freshwater withdrawals, and 2.2 billion people lack access to safe drinking water.

The Middle East laboratory

The geographical focus of this issue is the so-called MENA region – the Middle East and North Africa – where the water-energy-food nexus is a daily constraint on political survival. Eckart Woertz, of the German Institute for Global and Area Studies, paints this picture: in the Gulf, freshwater withdrawals exceed renewable resources by more than tenfold, and the region accounts for over 40 per cent of the world’s desalination capacity. The historical response to scarcity has been trade itself: importing food, and thus also the virtual water needed to produce it, to such an extent that – as the geographer Tony Allan, who coined the concept, observed – it is as if the region had secured a second Nile.

Martin Keulertz of Purdue University (Indiana) describes in his article the lesson learnt by the United Arab Emirates: scarcity does not necessarily equate to vulnerability. The country, with water resources among the lowest in the world (around one-tenth of those in Europe), has avoided the food crises feared by many by exchanging hydrocarbons for virtual water in one of the most successful examples of resource substitution in modern economic history. A model that has transformed environmental vulnerability into economic resilience, whilst remaining dependent on a fragile balance: abundant energy revenues, functioning supply chains, a manageable climate. But if just one of these elements fails, the model becomes precarious.

The hidden price of water

Then there is the technological frontier, addressed by Menachem Elimelech, one of the world’s leading experts on desalination. Israel now obtains 70–80 per cent of its drinking water from the sea; Kuwait and the UAE reach 95 per cent. A technology that was once a niche solution has become the cornerstone of national water security. But it comes at a cost in terms of energy, and in a world that must decarbonise its energy demand, the question is no longer whether fresh water can be produced from the sea, but at what cost and with what new dependencies. Adolfo R. Escobedo also highlights this when analysing the hidden risks: a thermal power station can consume up to 200 litres of water per kilowatt-hour, and around 40 per cent of the world’s thermal power stations operate in regions experiencing severe water stress. Solving one aspect of the problem often shifts the pressure onto another.

The issue then broadens its focus to Asia, Latin America and Africa, and features the voice of chef and FAO ambassador Fatmata Binta, who calls for a rethink of abundance: “more does not necessarily mean better”.

World Energy takes complexity – geopolitical, technological and legal – seriously and explains it to those who want to understand where energy is heading. This issue revolves around a question that is as simple as it is uncomfortable: will governments manage to govern these interdependencies before the system’s vulnerabilities turn into a crisis?

For those who want to understand where energy is heading, the issue is available at https://www.eni.com/static/it-IT/world-energy-magazine/the-nexus.html