The water-land-energy nexus: A system dynamics approach for sustainable resource management in the United Arab Emirates
Growing resource demand driven by population growth is placing significant pressure on already stressed resource systems (UNEP and IRP, 2024). Water, energy, and land underpin nearly all socioeconomic activities (Zhang et al., 2024). Despite their interdependence, they are often managed in silos, intensifying competition and trade-offs (Venghaus et al., 2019). A nexus approach acknowledges these linkages and offers a pathway to enhance resource management and system resilience (Cremades et al., 2019). The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is an energy-rich yet water scarce and arid country, making integrated resource management essential for sustainable development (Jägerskog and Barghouti, 2022). This study aims to pinpoint trade-offs and strategic opportunities for intervention by answering the question “How can a system dynamics approach to the UAE’s water-energy-land nexus support sustainable resource management?” A qualitative causal loop diagram (CLD) is developed to map system interactions across social, economic, and environmental factors, complemented by quantitative graph analysis (GA) metrics - betweenness, closeness, and eigenvector centrality - to identify and prioritise leverage points. The CLD analysis highlights five key themes: water security, energy security, fossil fuel lock-in, food security, and food import vulnerability. GA reveals six leverage points and classifies their structural roles in enabling system change, demonstrating the value of combing CLD and GA. This approach provides the first integrated visual representation of the UAE’s resource nexus, offering decision-makers the ability to anticipate cross-sectoral impacts and trace challenges back to their underlying systemic drivers. Building on these insights, seven recommendations are proposed across policy, target reforms, and research, each ranked based on their transformative potential. A scenario analysis examines the resource nexus across four climate–population scenarios, showing water and energy are most sensitive to climate change, while land is more affected by population growth. Selected interventions are stress-tested across the scenarios to assess their robustness in alleviating nexus pressures. Overall, the results provide evidence-backed rationale for adopting a nexus approach, both as a tool for designing interventions and as a perspective that fosters more informed decision-making. This strengthens the delivery of national targets in the UAE and sets the foundation for cross-sectoral dialogues and future participatory approaches.