Breaking Silo Thinking within the South African Water-Energy-Food Nexus via Systems Thinking and Simulation Workshops.

The current disconnect in policy development and management of the water, energy, and food resources threatens their security of supply despite their inextricable interlinkage, commonly known as Water-Energy-Food nexus. The security of these basic human needs is aggravated by climate change's cross-cutting role, which impacts their availability. These apprehensions suggest that contemporary methods are required to improve and enhance the management of the food, water, and energy resources within the climate change discourse. This study applies Systems Thinking methodologies to foster collaboration amongst key stakeholders within Eskom, the electricity generating sector in South Africa. This was done through several simulation workshops held amongst employees within the generation, transmission, distribution, and corporate employees. The workshops demonstrated the ability of the systems thinking approach to enable stakeholders to apply the “nexus thinking” in managing the WEF sectors within the climate change discourse. The study concludes by recommending the application of this simulation within policy development and other key sectors to enable a broader application of nexus thinking, thus assisting in addressing the silo approach within these resource management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]