The WEB Nexus

The essence of the Water-Energy-Biomass (WEB) Nexus is that (the Sun’s) Energy drives the biochemistry of photosynthesis to create Biomass. Water is the medium of biochemistry, so Water is the fulcrum of the WEB Nexus.

Depending on the state of that biomass; coal, zooplankton, corn or corned beef, it can be utilized to produce heat, catfish, beef, cream or human beings.

The Sun initiates the Water Cycle by causing evaporation of sea water to form clouds, creating temperature and pressure differentials that cause winds to blow the clouds over land where they deposit clean freshwater as rain to flow into rivers that ultimately flow back into the sea. This effect of the Sun’s Energy is what we call “weather” in the short term, locally and “climate” in the longer term, globally.

Climate Change is therefore about how the effects of the Sun’s Energy input on earth might change the established dynamics at play between Water and Biomass production at the WEB Nexus.

One of the effects of the Anthropocene has been to change these dynamics by diverting water courses, and increasing and concentrating the inflow of contaminants into the Water Cycle.

The nightmare scenario is that the effects of the Anthropocene and climate change compound each other’s effects via Feedback loops. There are already signs of this happening as warmer summers are correlating with larger, more intense, more widespread and longer lasting CyanoHABs globally.

Changes in weather and climate cause the dynamics of Water availability to change, and change means to be more variable and unpredictable. But the way we operate our agricultural Biomass production to feed ourselves is dependent upon predictable and consistent Water availability. So climate and weather changes are problematic.

In Systems Theory terms, the WEB Nexus is a Complex Adaptive System and as such it exhibits inertia to disruption, and the ability to withstand and recover from perturbations to the System.

However, when disruption occurs to the extent that a Tipping Point is reached, and system defining Attractors are displaced, catastrophic system transformation takes place as evidenced by the effects of eutrophication in places such as Lake Erie and Florida in the USA.

Even if we could stop climate change tomorrow, our continued existence would still be at risk if the high level of nutrients that we discharge into our Water resources in the form of fecal waste and agricultural runoff continues to be disproportionately appropriated to produce Biomass in the form of algae and Cyanobacteria.

The Nutrient Cycle and Biomass formation is the ultimate Renewable resource model for us to follow. So the principles by which Renewable Water can be achieved are clear; we must drive

  • rapid, complete and efficient recycling of the resource
  • “local loop” fractal recycling is crucial to achieving this.

Furthermore, the way that evolution has produced greater biodiversity and populations of species of Biomass is perhaps the definitive evidence of the benefits of emergence in a Complex Adaptive System.

The complexity of the WEB Nexus illustrates that you cannot “solve” one resource challenge without affecting the other two. So energy policy, water policy, land policy and therefore infrastructure strategy, economic growth and job creation are all impacted by the WEB Nexus.

So understanding and managing the Water-Energy-Biomass Nexus to better adapt to how it might change is our real challenge around Climate Change.

And climate change will be moving the goalposts all the time.

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