A new open-access paper has been published in Agricultural Water Management, a journal of Elsevier (Impact Factor 7.8). The study puts a pointed question to the Water-Energy-Food-Ecosystems (WEFE) Nexus: if the whole premise of the framework is that these resources are interdependent, does the research literature actually treat them that way?
Following PRISMA guidelines, the authors screened 16,497 records from Scopus and Web of Science and coded 120 studies published between 2015 and 2025 against 26 criteria across seven thematic categories.
The answer is a crowded core and a thin periphery. Energy production (92% of studies), food availability (89%), agricultural water withdrawal (88%) and ecosystem services (88%) appear almost everywhere, while clean air (15%), the prevalence of undernourishment (16%) and employment (18%) remain marginal. A co-occurrence analysis shows indicators clustering within pillars rather than across them; the constantly invoked water–energy link shows no association beyond chance.
On this basis the paper reframes ecosystem integrity as the foundation of the Nexus rather than an optional co-benefit and proposes a “WEFE+ Nexus” that surrounds the core with socio-economic conditions, governance, climate pressure and technological drivers.
Full paper: Mapping the Water-Energy-Food-Ecosystem (WEFE) nexus: Insights and limitations from a systematic literature review on interconnected resource management (open access)
