A methodology to assess the impact of agricultural practices in the Water-Energy-Food Nexus.

By 2030, it is estimated that the world population will be 8.3 billion people, increasing the pression in energy, water, food, land use and mineral extraction, especially in the developing world. These estimates indicate the immediate need to adopt interventions that can minimize these impacts. There is a lot of talk about sustainability, but it is still rare to make the results of integrated evaluations available on various topics. When considering the integrated Nexus Food-Water-Energy (F-W-E) assessment, this fact is even more challenging. Considering the importance of the agricultural sector in Brazil and the existence of areas in different stages of degradation, it becomes strategic for interventions that can generate socio-economic and environmental benefits and positive impacts to the tripod F-W-E. Thus, the present proposal will be based on the Ribeirão das Lajes dam (RJ), a core area for the water supply of the second largest city in Brazil - Rio de Janeiro. A methodological approach able to generate an integrated assessment tool to evaluate the impact of agriculture practices in the Nexus F - W - E will be presented. We used secondary official dada as the main input for this tool. One of the reasons is to make it accessible for different stakeholders and decision makers. It can help to get better decisions regarding land use intervention - which may be technical or political.