SustainFood participates in Southern Africa Regional WEF+ Nexus Summit, 19-20 August 2024
By: Chris Scott
Date: 23 September 2024
Chris Scott, Penn State Co-Principal Investigator on the SustainFood network project, attended and presented at the international event, Accelerating Progress Towards Achieving the SDGs through Broadening the Water-Energy-Food (WEF+) Nexus, hosted by the South African Water Research Commission in Pretoria. In attendance were delegates from countries across Africa, Europe, and North America, who presented and discussed how the WEF Nexus can be expanded to address other challenges including the environment and health, especially to help local and regional partners make further progress towards the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
In his presentation, Transdisciplinary WEF+ Science and Practice Networks SustainFood as a USA-Africa-Europe SDG 17 “Partnership for the Goals, Scott identified additional WEF+ challenges, including
climate, carbon, and migration, which the SustainFood network is working to address. More significantly, he made the point that networks like SustainFood require a transdisciplinary approach of researchers
and scientists partnering with policymakers, planners, communities, and regional groupings like many that were represented at the regional summit. These network-to-network interactions (a core goal of the
National Science Foundation’s AccelNet program that supports SustainFood) are examples of SDG 17 “Partnerships for the Goals”.
The summit provided an opportunity to develop and extend SustainFood’s WEF Nexus-focused networking, including with a Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) WEF Nexus Dialogue
Project supported by the EU, with South African partner University of KwaZulu-Natal that is joining forces with the UN University’s Institute for Water, Environment and Health to develop the African Academy on
Water, Environment, and Health. As part of his travels to the region, Scott also met with global WEF Nexus scholar, Mohammad Al-Saidi, of Qatar University and the Qatar National Research Foundation, and explored mutual interests in SustainFood plans in North Africa in 2025