From National Indices to Regional Action-an Analysis of Food, Energy, Water Security in Ecuador, Bolivia, and Peru

Food-Energy-Water (FEW) nexus frameworks may be well suited to provide tools for achieving the sustainable development goals by allowing for evaluation of multiple food, energy, and water priorities simultaneously. In terms of natural resources security, several quantification tools that consider accessibility and availability of resources also exist. Previous FEW security scholars have constructed quantification tools at national level, yet we hypothesize that these tools fail to articulate important regional variation within a country. In this research we tackle this challenge by developing methods to study the spatial patterns of FEW availability and accessibility at sub-national level in Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia. The integrated approach in this study articulates how national statistics often misrepresent FEW security regional variation. Our tool also has the potential to be applied at multiple spatial scales allowing development actors to prioritize multiple natural resource development priorities worldwide.