Food and Water Systems in the Intelligent Age 2024

The stack’s ability to use standardized, multidimensional real-time data to create forecasts and scenario analyses will help policy-makers craft more effective and responsive policies. For instance, governments can harness predictive models to foresee droughts or food shortages, allowing for timely adjustments in water allocation or farming subsidies. Furthermore, the tool will assist financial institutions and governments in prioritizing investments in infrastructure and sustainability, identifying high-impact areas (like regions needing irrigation), supporting risk management and unlocking funding and repurposing subsidies through data-backed insights. In addition, it can spur collaboration across regions and countries, especially around transboundary water management, boosting integration. Finally, it can help farmers protect and adapt their livelihoods to the changing climate, providing insights into the right crops, practices and financing options available to match their climatic conditions, water availability and technological capacity. The experts from the GFC recommend the development of a food-water stack as a public good. As such, the development and decision- making needs are contextual and need to be localized. To begin with, context-specific country-led approaches are suggested where implementation of the stack framework is led by the public sector, which convenes key stakeholders to develop a common good. Subsequently, the GFC also recommends factoring in the energy nexus to ensure resource optimization and understanding the trade-offs better. Key country recommendations: –Develop efficient and collective data infrastructures . In the first phase, existing data sources across ministries and stakeholders can provide the foundational layer. However, as the tool progresses, common data- sharing protocols, as well as contours around privacy, access and monetization, need to be developed. A key focus of the stack is to address data interoperability issues, with research and development partners tasked with designing a robust AI-driven architecture. For governments providing initial policy support, their existing data, funding and infrastructure can provide multiple benefits. Data must be continually evaluated to ensure relevancy, and the stack will require continuous maintenance to be fit for purpose. –Intentional co-creation is critical, especially with end users (e.g. farmers, policy-makers and consumers) , to ensure that the stack applies to different contexts and includes necessary data for sufficiently tailored, scenario- specific applications. This also allows the stack to use the data sources centrally available, add more contextual and scattered data (multinational, regional, national, farm, etc.) and work towards the unified goal of improving decision-making. –Design to ensure localization and adoption. While some high-level characteristics of food and water systems are similar across the world, they often possess specific features unique to the country and region. Localization guarantees ownership and commitment to improving implementation over the long term. At the same time, regional and global cooperation and coordination are encouraged, especially among countries that share a water basin. Ensuring a multistakeholder approach to stack development and use is critical, especially for situations in rain-fed agricultural areas and other stakeholders, including the private sector and community organizations. –Ensuring open access : As the stack would assist with decision-making that impacts public and common goods, it should be managed and governed by a neutral, trustworthy platform or initiative. Guided by a framework established by the individual country, this approach offers guardrails against misuse and interference by external actors. It also allows for a more collaborative platform that brings net benefits The food-water stack as a public good: a roadmap to action The stack can empower decision-makers to invest in water by illustrating the right incentives on the local, country and global scales. 3 Ownership by the public sector can unlock development funding, as the stack can be used to make the investment case for long-term and integrated action on food and water. Food and Water Systems in the Intelligent Age 17