Co-creating sustainable solutions for enhancing WEFE nexus governance through stakeholder engagement

Abstract

[EN] Governance of the Water-Energy-Food-Ecosystems (WEFE) nexus requires approaches that integrate stakeholder knowledge and support structured decision-making. However, existing participatory processes often struggle to translate stakeholder inputs into structured evaluations of alternative solutions. This study develops a structured co-creation framework and applies it to the Segura River Basin (Spain), combining interviews, multi-actor dialogues, Group Model Building, and Fuzzy Cognitive Mapping (FCM), a semi-quantitative tool for representing feedback structures and integrating qualitative inputs. The process engages stakeholders from the water, energy, food, and ecosystems sectors to jointly identify a set of solutions and evaluate them against twelve system challenges. The results reveal clear differences in the scope and distribution of impacts across the nexus. Solutions focused on renewable energy planning and those promoting alternative water resources generate the most significant cross-sectoral effects, whereas measures related to water governance produce more sector-specific outcomes. A combined efficiency and feasibility assessment identifies interventions based on alternative water resources and renewable energy planning as the most strategically balanced. Beyond the case-specific findings, the proposed framework provides a transparent and transferable approach for linking participatory processes with solution prioritisation in complex socio-ecological contexts.