Developing narratives for policy-relevant water-energy-food-ecosystem nexus pathways: How global and European Union drivers interact

The shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs) and representative concentration pathways (RCPs) were created for socioeconomic and climate change assessments and are widely used in global environmental assessments. However, mapping SSP-RCP pathways and policies for water, energy, food and ecosystems (WEFE) remains elusive. There is uncertainty on how to integrate current European Union (EU) policies with climate and socioeconomic pathways. To address that uncertainty, we developed narratives describing possible policy-relevant WEFE nexus pathways until 2050 by collaborating with a broad range of stakeholders and experts. By mapping several SSP-RCP pathways with EU-WEFE policies, three primary policy-relevant WEFE pathways, namely “Sustainable Development,” “Weak Cooperation,” and “Global Fragmentation”, and two extreme pathways, “Emissions Neutrality” and “Global Risk,” were identified. For each of these pathways, a narrative was developed explaining how global and EU drivers interact. These narratives integrate climate, socioeconomic and governance drivers. Findings show that the Emissions Neutrality pathway would require a high level of coordination between global and EU commitments. At the other end, Global Fragmentation represents a challenging future for the EU, showing that the global trends will condition the achievement of EU-WEFE objectives and highlighting the need for global coordination. Beyond the results, these narratives contribute to a better understanding of WEFE nexus. Furthermore, they can serve as a basis to explore potential future developments and asses WEFE nexus solutions. • We integrate governance drivers to climate and socioeconomic drivers. • A Mapping between SSP-RCP pathways and EU water, energy, food and ecosystems policy objectives is carried out. • Participatory approach is relevant for the development of policy-relevant WEFE nexus pathways • We draft narratives that describe how global and European Union drivers interact • Despite the EU relevance in the global context, there is a weak link between the WEFE policy objectives at the EU level and global climate and socioeconomic developments, while the link in the opposite direction is strong. • The Emissions Neutrality pathway would require a high level of coordination between global and EU commitments.