The interactions between food, water, and energy, both now and over the next few decades, are of paramount interest to policy, science, and society at large. By 2050, the world population is projected to increase to 9 billion and the number of people living in urban areas is expected to double.

These trends in population density and movement, coupled with land use change and climate variability, will lead to major increases in demand for resources and hold important implications for security and social justice. The reciprocal and dynamic processes of urbanisation; physical movements of populations, the build-up of city territories, transformation of economic structures, extension of suburban sprawl, and reurbanisation result in increasing regional stress on the urban food-water-energy (FWE) system.

To address these issues, the Sustainable Urbanisation Global Initiative (SUGI)-FWE Nexus call was jointly established by the European Commission, the Belmont Forum and the Joint Programming Initiative (JPI) Urban Europe.

Future Earth introduced the call’s theme and provided essential coordination support to enable integration of transdisciplinary training and learning, networking support, and capacity building.