黄河流域水、能源、食物政策整合程度、模式与结构.

Achieving ecological protection and high-quality development in the Yellow River Basin requires enhancing the water-energy-food nexus, with policy integration being an important governance tool. Using relevant data from 2010 to 2023, this study applied social network analysis and exponential random graph models to study the degree, patterns, and structure of water resource, energy, and agricultural management policy integration in nine provinces and five urban clusters in the Yellow River Basin. The study arrived at the following conclusions: ① The overall level of policy integration in the water-energy-food nexus of the Yellow River Basin during the sample period was not high. Water resource policy had the highest level of integration, and the Guanzhong Plain urban cluster had the widest range of policy integration. The Jiziwan bend metropolitan area exhibited a relatively high degree of policy integration. ② From the basin perspective, there are three types of relationships in the integration pattern of water-energy-food policies: core, to-be-disseminated, and innovative. Each type required different approaches to promote top-down and bottom-up policy integration. ③ In the Yellow River Basin, attention is mainly focused on the integration of water resources and food policies. Capacity-building tools are the most frequently used and the most effective instruments. However, there is a neglect of policy integration between energy and water as well as between energy and food subsystems, and a lack of utilization of learning-based policy instruments, leading to imbalances in the progress of policy integration across the entire basin. This indicates that elevating the water-energy-food nexus to a strategic position is essential for promoting ecological environmental protection and high-quality development in the Yellow River Basin. Additionally, it is necessary to promote organizational reform, expand interdepartmental collaboration, and simultaneously enhance policy integration degree of water, food and energy, particularly the integration of energy and food policies, as well as between energy and water resource policies. Moreover, it is crucial to enrich the types of policy instruments used in subsystem integration and optimize their utilization structure, particularly focusing on incentive-based and learning-based instruments. Finally, for the coordinated promotion of policy integration throughout the basin, it is important to expand communication platforms between provinces and cities, and prioritize the widespread implementation of diffusion and innovation integration relationships across the entire basin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]