The Nexus Observatory is a project of the United Nations University Institute for Integrated Management of Material Fluxes and of Resources (UNU-FLORES), which promotes a nexus approach to the integrated management of environmental resources - water soil and waste. A fundamental element of the nexus approach consists of providing stakeholders, especially decision-makers (policy level) and practitioners (implementation level) with the necessary information and evidence-base to make decisions that guarantee that the needs of present and future generations can be met. The combination of research excellence and policy-relevance, which are guiding principles of UNU-FLORES, demands the exploration and application of innovative ideas and approaches to nexus knowledge consolidation, management and translation to make it useful to real world challenges.

WIRE - Water & Irrigated agriculture Resilient Europe, helps customising existing or upcoming innovation to the farmers’ and growers’ needs, and to facilitate innovation uptake in the complex, multi-faceted irrigated agriculture reality and market. This will be carried out by taking into account the specific requirements deriving from the agro-climatic conditions across the EU, the legal framework as well as the diversity of farming systems and crops. For this purpose numerous case studies have been selected to implement and test solutions.

WEAM4i (Water & Energy Advanced Management for Irrigation) is a European project co-funded by the European Union under the 7th Framework Program within ENV-2013-WATER-INNO-DEMO-1 (Challenge 6.3: Improving resource efficiency), with a budget of 7.6 M € over 42 months. It started on November 1st 2013 and was concluded on April 30th 2017. The project addresses two of the priorities outlined by the European Innovation Partnership on Water, an initiative of the European Commission (DG- Environment): ‘Water- Energy Nexus’ and ‘Decision Support Systems (DSS) and monitoring’. The aim of the project is to improve the efficiency of water use and reduce the costs of power irrigation systems. A smart network for the management of irrigation, WEAM4i ICT platform, has been developed to achieve this goal which integrates different information services and smart applications. It gives the possibility for the end-users to act interactively on the rational use of water and energy. The results of WEAM4i were tested and evaluated in three regions of the European Union covering a wide range of crops, water resources and energy markets: Aragon (Spain), Lower Saxony (Germany) and Alentejo (Portugal).

The Parties to the UNECE Water Convention decided on assessments of water-food-energy-ecosystems nexus to be carried out. A representative set of transboundary basins in the pan-European region and beyond was to be assessed based on proposals from the countries. The assessment aims at identifying, together with the concerned sectors and relevant stakeholders, 1) hindrances to and opportunities for additional and equitable sharing of benefits from stronger integration across sectors, and 2) practical solutions for improving security and for reconciling the different sectors’ needs. The process has been designed to support ownership by the authorities, meaningful participation of various stakeholders, learning together and exchanging experience between basins. This assessment under the UNECE Water Convention has parallels with the National Policy Dialogues' process through which a cross-sectoral and stakeholder approach is also being implemented.