Quantifying and Linking Sustainable Land - Water - Energy 2 Food Nexus Resources and Livelihoods of Local Community in Ethiopia

: The sustainable management of Land - Water - Energy - Food (LWEF) nexus requires an environmental characterization that allows the comparison of complex interlinkages between nexus resources and livelihoods. This complexity makes this characterization difficult coupled with lim-15 ited study in quantifying sustainability of LWEF nexus and its linkage with livelihood. Therefore, the present study aimed to investigate the link between sustainable LWEF nexus and livelihoods. We used analytical hierarchy process and pairwise comparison matrix in combination with weighting model. The result of composite LWEF nexus index was 0.083 representing, low sustaina-19 bility. This could be linked with nexus resources consumption, use, and management. From the analysis of the weight of land, water, energy and food nexus resources, the highest weight was ob-21 served for food. The focus of on food production only shows no clear synergy on provisioning, supporting or regulating nexus resources to address livelihoods. The result further showed that LWEF nexus resources have strong correlation with livelihoods. This was evidenced by social (r>0.8, P<0.01), natural (r>0.3, P<0.05) and physical (r>0.6, P<0.01) livelihood indicators showed strong pos-25 itive correlation with LWEF nexus resources. From this results, it was observed that managing nexus resources not only provide a significant contribution to achieve sustainable LWEF nexus, but also 27 be effective for enhancing livelihood through food security. This could be attained by strong evi-28 dence based policy to ensure sustainable use of nexus resources. The results provided by this study 29 would serve as the foundation for future study, policy formulation and implementation.

The relationship between nexus resource and livelihoods is said to be a symbiotic 66 relationship in a form of a vicious cycle, due to ability to affect one another [24]. So far, 67 ample empirical studies conducted on the link between individual nexus resources and 68 livelihoods, however, studies linking LWEF nexus and livelihood are barely conducted at 69 the study area to analyze the interlink between sustainable LWEF nexus and livelihoods. 70 Therefore, this study specifically seeks to (i) identify LWEF nexus and livelihoods 71 indicators; (ii) analyze sustainability of LWEF nexus and its contribution for livelihoods 72 improvement; (iii) assess the livelihoods strategies and its sensitivity with sustainable 73 LWEF nexus. The findings from this study will add up to the literature on the subject 74 area and provides foundation for future studies, policy formulation and implementation 75 in the study area and beyond.  82 and Southern Nation, Nationality and People Regional States. As outlined in the Inte-83 grated Development Master Plan Study (2010), the basin is characterized by under devel-84 opment, widespread poverty and severe land degradation. 85 The Gidabo Watershed is part of Rift Valley Basin, and also called Ethiopian Rift runs 86 through Ethiopia in the southwest direction from the Afar Triple Junction [25]. This area 87 is characterized by wide topography and climatic variation ranging from humid in the 88 highland to semi-arid [26]. It is situated between 6 0 9' 4'' to 6 0 56' 4''N latitude and 37 0 55' 89 to 38 0 35''E longitude, covering an area that is approximately 3549 km 2 (Figure 1). The 90 maximum and minimum altitudes are about 3213m.a.s. l and 1171 m.a.s.l respectively. 91 The unique characteristics of the watershed are associated mainly with the results of 92 faulting and volcanism associated with rifting process [27]. As a result, the typical rift 93 morphology is well developed which clearly show the upper and lower parts which drain 94 to the common outlet (Figure 1). 95 The population in the watershed has nearly doubled over the last two decades from 96 593,157 to over 1.5M [25]. Increased population in the basin and the socio-economic de-97 velopments have put pressure on land that consequently declined water and food poten-98 tial in the watershed [28]. 101 Figure 1:Map of the case study area 102 Land, water, energy and food nexus resources are all crucial contributors to food security. 103 As a result of growing resource scarcity, the inter-connectedness of these sectors has be-104 come more apparent, as evidenced by growing tradeoffs. Proactive analysis of the current 105 consumption, use and management of LWEF nexus resources are required to holistically 106 assess and promote the best management option that co-balance benefits across LWEF 107 nexus resources as highlighted by WoldeYohannes, Cotter [29]. 108 109 Indicators are becoming increasingly important for communicating information to policy 110 makers and stakeholders, as well as for assessing the environmental performance and 111 progress in general [30]. Nowadays, it is believed that composite indicators have been 112 used for quality of life and environment through providing information on the status of 113 the economic, social and environmental component to reduce the number of measure-114 ments necessary to give descriptions of an indicator [31,32]. 115 It is known that clear indicators are the basis of any effective monitoring, evaluation sys-116 tem and data obtaining system [21]. Since, this study is based on local cases one of the 117 challenges in performing this study is obtaining sufficient data and information relevant 118 to our study. In order to track the way in which LWEF nexus and livelihood links and its 119 progress towards reaching certain goals the researcher need to measure this change using 120 literature and key informants having enough knowledge in the area to select and develop 121 indicators. 122 In order to develop indicators in Table 1, we used the following four stepwise procedures 123 to define the indicator variable; (1) Collecting ideas to perform this we compiled all ideas 124 from key informants without judging them, then we organized the ideas into group to 125 categorize as relating to specific individual objectives and analytical questions. (2) Struc-126 ture and refine ideas, in this steps we further structured and consolidated the ideas to sort 127 out the relevant ones by referring the work of other researchers/organization or using pre-128 viously developed sets of indicator. Additionally, this steps helped to remove unneces-129 sary indicator and to merge those having similarity. (3) Formulating indicators to make 130 sure that selected indicator in both meaningful and measurable, 131 we consider specific measurable attainable realistic and timely (SMART) techniques to 132 formulate the indicators that showed what results were likely to be reached within what 133 target group, and in what time frame. (4) Selection of indicator, the assembled indicators 134 through step 1-3 which were many, however, this step focus on indicators quality which 135 is more important than their number, therefore, we set priorities to have a small but mean-136 ingful set of indicators. 137 Following above methods we prioritized the criteria and set indicators for LWEF nexus 138 resources (Table 1). Table 1  to derive the priority weights from PCM. 163 The AHP supports creation of weights based on expert's judgments structured in a pair wise comparison 164 matrix by applying Saaty's scale of intensities importance [49]. The tool for data collection for AHP was pre-165 sented in Microsoft excel, and respondents were asked to rank the 12 comparison matrices. Then, through 166 further calculation, weightings for criteria and indicators within each criterion was computed ( Table 2). 167 Mabhaudhi, Nhamo [46] explained that the full description of how the AHP and PCM normalization works.

Establishment of LWEF nexus indicator and sub-indicators
168 Table 2. ing, rather than fleeting [52]. For detail on sustainable livelihoods approach, the five 196 main livelihoods component adopted and explained from [53]. 197 Therefore, the current study adopted the DFID SLF to characterize the livelihoods indi-198 cators [54]. The five basic components of livelihood show the variation in people's access 199 to assets. A single physical livelihood component can generate multiple benefits. For 200 example, if someone has secured access to land (natural capital), they may also be well-201 endowed with financial capital, as they are able to use the land not only for direct pro-202 ductive activities but also as collateral for loans. This helps to develop different sub-live-203 lihoods indicator.  The importance of evaluating livelihoods from basic human aspects (i.e., land, water, en-213 ergy and food) enhances local community understanding towards the management and 214 use of limited nexus resources and to better link with their livelihoods. 215 Most researchers have proposed various methods and evaluation of index system to as-216 sess the sustainability of WEF nexus in global, national and regional basis [60][61][62][63]. Com-217 bining the livelihood indicators helps to measure the interaction between five main live-218 lihoods indicators [54]. We used the following equation to standardize the sub indicators; 219 where is sub-indicator, corresponds to the ℎ measurement of SL indicator varia-221 ble, ̅ is the average value of and is the standard deviation. As a result, we write 222 livelihood component (Lc). 223

= ∑
(2) 224 where the estimated value of the livelihood indicators (0 ≤ ≤ 4) in relation to LWEF 225 nexus, indicates the weight for the i th observation and represents the normalized 226 value of indicator for the i th observation. 227 In this paper, we used weighting model (WM) concept to combine the weight of LWEF 228 nexus and livelihoods indicators indices selected from literature as explained in Table 1 229 and 2. This model helps to determine an index system that could evaluate LWEF system 230 to associate with sustainable livelihoods using weights of individual indicator which 231 helps to develop composite indicator value and the resulting ranking (Yang et al., 2018). 232 There are studies conducted on exploring WEF nexus sustainability [46, 64, 65]. However, 233 our study tries to link sustainability of nexus resources and livelihoods which have not 234 been studied so far from small geographical units in Ethiopia, particularly in Gidabo wa-235 tershed. This provides some degree of novelty to the current work. 236

237
The data on LWEF nexus resources and livelihood indicators for the study were sourced 238 from both secondary and primary sources. The primary sources involved the combination 239 of structured interviews with local community and key informants. The survey was con-240 ducted within four-month period from July 2019 to October 2019 following two ap-241 proaches. First, we made expert interview (N=50) and focus group discussion with ex-242 perienced expert from natural resources, agriculture, water and energy sector to charac-243 terize the sub-indicators for LWEF and livelihood Table 1 and 2. Particularly, the identifi-244 cation of indicators helps for household to easily categorize which livelihood indicators 245 linked with LWEF nexus resources. Second, a structured questionnaire was administered 246 to 434 farmer household heads (N=434). The structured questionnaire mainly focused on 247 assessing the importance of the proposed LWEF nexus indicators for sustainable liveli-248 hood indicators (SLI) using Likert scale (0-4, where 0=Not Important; 1=Slightly Im-249 portant, 2=Moderately Important, 3=Important, 4=Very Important) was adopted for this 250 study. 251 Based on the weight of indicators, we further used logistic regression to describe the 252 causal relationship between LWEF nexus indicators (i.e. independent variable N) and live-253 lihoods indicators (i.e. dependent variable δ). When using the logistic regression, we need 254 to make an algebraic explanation to arrive at our usual linear regression equation. The 255 logistic regression is given by: where δ is probability, is the constants, and ( = 1, 2, … , ) is the regression coef-258 ficients. In our case the dependent variables (δ) is not continuous, and converted to prob-259 ability ratio (ω) of livelihoods indicators and computed as; where ln= natural logarithm, and ω is called logit (δ), leads to the following equations;  Table 4 presents the result of PCM of the four nexus resources indicators. The comparison 297 of indicators with itself is one. The symmetrical characteristics of the matrix is explained 298 by considering the lower half the triangle, since the remaining cells are the reciprocals of 299 the lower triangle. According to Saaty [49], the relationships are established using a scale 300 ranging from 1 to 9 and their reciprocals. The result shows that the indicators with the 301 highest weights are the food utilization, water affordability, food stability and access to 302 food ( Table 2). This indicates how the percentage of food and water nexus component 303 predict the livelihoods dependences compared with others.   Table 1 and overlay the transparent and clearly 318 defined weighted criteria which used in importance index scenario. The idea behind com-319 posite LWEF nexus index is to aggregate indicators about the sustainability aspects and 320 then provides an easy to understand scoring system to determine sustainability. 321 LWEF nexus composite index for the study region is 0.083 (Table 4), which implies shows 322 low index [46,67]. For example, study conducted by Mabhaudhi,Nhamo [46], on the WEF 323 nexus integrated index for South Africa was 0.145 and categorized as low index revealing 324 unsustainable performance of resources utilization and management, which is consistent 325 with our finding. It is known that the case study area is more likely dominated by agri-326 culture based livelihoods, but the expansion of non-agriculture based industries demand-327 ing for more land, water and energy are managed friendly in environmentally sustainable 328 way to the extent that natural resource levels are improving rather than deteriorating. 329 The sustainability index is used to simplify the complex decision making process that will 330 help the stakeholders to come with more sustainable solution [21]. Identifying of these 331 indices is crucial since, LWEF nexus index computed from indicators are strongly linked 332 with the livelihoods of local community. 333 The regional performance of natural resources index is not yet designed, which could lead 334 to nexus resources trade-off. However, there has been wide ranging support for individ-335 ual and sectorial based management of nexus resources. Lack of managing those inter-336 linked resources in joint way creates a tension in sustaining and supplying sufficient basic 337 resources for human well-being. 338 The result of low composite index for LWEF shows lack of management of nexus re-339 sources in integrated approach, while food production merely considered as core element, 340 as also reported by Mabhaudhi,Nhamo [46]. This is also evidenced by the highest nor-341 malized weight of food indicators (Table 2), which shows that land has been overlooked 342 to be part of nexus resources component, while it affects overall performance of nexus 343 resources. For example, Ethiopia has the potential for arable land and water sources [23], 344 however millions of people still suffer from food and water insecurity, and inadequate 345 of modern energy supply. 346 Ethiopia depends on hydropower as the main sources of energy, in which food produc-347 tion and energy compete for the same water resources. Similarly, agriculture is a source 348 of economy for over 80% of population, major means of livelihood for over 80 % of popu-349 lation, this indicates strong dependence of livelihoods on land, water and energy for food 350 production with varied level of consumption. However, agriculture is seriously chal-351 lenged by human-induced factors, which pose pressure in the transformation of rural live-352 lihoods, which need sustainable natural resource management. Nevertheless, the current 353 unsustainability of LWEF nexus resources shows that, the sectorial based nexus resource 354 management and practices indeed significantly impacts both resources and the liveli-355 hoods.  357 Local communities, especially the rural poor in the developing world, depend directly on 358 all or part of nexus resources for their livelihood [56]. Therefore, understanding and con-359 sensus building are necessary to identify, create and utilize nexus approach in order to 360 reduce trade-off. Current study identified twenty-three sustainable livelihoods indicators 361 which are linked with land, water, energy and food nexus resources (Table 3). 362 Table 5 shows from the social livelihoods indicators the community acceptances ranked 363 as the most important indicators compared with others. This indicates that, the commu-364 nity acceptance of LWEF nexus resources as a source of livelihoods can be considered 365 from multipurpose utilization of nexus resources for multiple sources of their livelihoods. 366 367 368 Unsustainability of LWEF nexus, in this study (0.083), shows vulnerability of local 386 community for social livelihoods insecurity. To address these challenges, shift from 387 individual nexus resources management are the natural stage for the sustainable LWEF 388 nexus in relation to local community. 389 From the human livelihood component, health is ranked as the most important indicators 390 linked with sustainable LWEF (Table 5). The demand for food production steadily 391 increases with population growth and all of this happens in the light of changing 392 livelihoods, while millions of people do not have access to nutritious food that guarantees 393 a healthy and active life. This is strongly linked with lack of productive land, water and 394 energy sources. Ringler, Bhaduri [1] depicted that, rising food prices, and the recurrence 395 of extreme weather events are pushing more people into poverty and hunger, 396 compromising human health and well-being. Likely, other indicators such as labor 397 productivity, level of education, and knowledge sharing through information also depend 398 on distribution and use of nexus resource. 399  The natural livelihoods indicators had positive correlation (r> 0.30, P<0.05) with water and 428 energy indicators (Table 6). This result shows natural capital is very important to those 429 who derive all or part of their livelihoods from resource-based activities (farming, fishing, 430 gathering in forests, irrigation water dependent and others). Likewise, physical 431 livelihoods indicators have strong significant positive correlation with energy (r> 0.60, 432 P<0.01), pinpointing that infrastructure consists of changes to the physical environment 433 that help people to meet their basic needs and to be more productive. In general, the 434 relationships between LWEF nexus and livelihoods indicators play an important role in 435 the overall performance of livelihoods of local community. 436 The regression coefficients of land (β=0.82**, P<0.01) and food (β=0.01*, P< 0.05) indices 437 imply that, land and food have a significant positive effect on the composite social 438 livelihood indicators (Table 7). Comparably, the effect of land is slightly stronger than that 439 of food indicators. This ensures that sustainable land use management enhances food 440 security and also promotes biodiversity conservation, in agreement with the finding of 441 Hurni, Abate [69]. However, the current study reveals the low sustainable composite 442 index of LWEF, (0.083) (   The composite water index significantly affects human livelihoods indicators (β= -0.09, 450 P<0.05). Human capital is required in order to make good uses of limited water resources 451 which helps for the achievement positive livelihood outcome. The negative coefficient 452 value of water index indicates a single unit change in water management have a negative 453 impact on the livelihoods performance. Chen, Han [70], stated that water is the critical 454 resources which underpins all social and economic activity. 455 Table 7 shows, land (β= 0.14, P<0.01) and food (β= -0.60, P<0.05) nexus indicators have 456 significant effects on the physical livelihoods indicators. This implies that land indicators 457 significantly improve the community well-being and ecosystem conservation (Table 5), 458 while the food indicators reduce physical indicators performance. This shows that the 459 performance of land capability, suitability and productivity and food production has 460 increased or decreased through the method of adjusting the physical livelihoods 461 indicators, such as physical economic infrastructure that enable the household to pursue 462 its livelihoods. 463 Table 7 shows that food as nexus component indicators (β= 0.5534, P< 0.05), which 464 significantly affects the health, labor productivity and education, indeed major indicators 465 of human livelihoods with maximum weight and rank. 466 Table 7 shows, land (β= 0.1391, P<0.01) and food (β= -0.6042, P<0.05) nexus indicators have 467 significant effects on the physical livelihoods indicators. This implies that land indicators 468 significantly improve the community wellbeing and ecosystem conservation, while the 469 food indicators reduce physical indicators performance. This shows that the 470 performance of land capability, suitability and productivity and food production has 471 increased or decreased through the method of adjusting the physical livelihoods 472 indicators, such as physical economic infrastructure that enable the household to pursue 473 its livelihoods. 474 The coefficients of the land (β= 0.35, P<0.01) and water (β =0.10, P<0.01), indicates that both 475 nexus resources have positive influence on the natural livelihoods indicators (Table 7). 476 This implies land and water are key environmental services in which food is produced 477 from as a natural capital. Thus, the livelihoods of local community are strongly linked 478 with the nexus resources components. Therefore, to overcome the current unsustainability 479 of nexus resources, there is a need for paradigm shift from business as usual to nexus 480 resource management approach which needs to start from grass root level.

Physical component of livelihoods indicators includes four indicators (
With the exception of all nexus resources, understanding energy as part of nexus 482 resources is very critical. Since, energy availability and access would have a wide range 483 of positive externalities on various dimension of human welfare. However, the impact of 484 modern energy on sustainable livelihoods is less known. Therefore, due to the potential 485 dependences of local community on traditional energy sources they fail to consider energy 486 as nexus component. This pose unintended pressure on the environment. 487 This shows the need of sustainable management of LWEF nexus as an important 488 analytical tool for transforming livelihoods. With this, the idea of nexus resources 489 sustainability has received wider attention, however weighting, ranking and linking with 490 the livelihoods will be the most important to predict the range of acceptable nexus 491 resources impacts and community coping strategies.  Table 8 indicates the sensitivity analysis for LWEF nexus and five main livelihoods 498 indicators, the sensitivity judgment scale was adopted from Hosmer and Lemeshow [71]. 499 The result show that, the probability of livelihoods, particularly social component 500 increases by 89.1% if nexus resources, i.e. food increased by 1.00 % (Table 8). 501 This implies increased food production could enhance social livelihoods indicator. In 502 addition, human, financial and physical livelihoods components show the same trends. 503 This indicates that all the livelihoods indicators have the probability to be influenced by 504 food availability, access, utilization and stability. Likely, the probability of natural 505 livelihoods increases by 69.20% if food increases by one unit. This suggests that the ability 506 of households to undertake the production of food is strongly associated with their access 507 to natural livelihood component i.e. farmland. 508 The probability of a unit increases in water as one nexus resources increases the social, 509 human and financial component of livelihoods by 79.90, 69.60 and 69.10% respectively 510 (Table 8). This pinpoints that water is the critical nexus resources which underpins all 511 social and economic activity since clean, healthy and sustainable water supply strongly 512 linked with the livelihoods of local communities. 513 In general, the overall sensitivity analysis indicates that the probability of livelihoods 514 dependences in the four nexus resources is greater than 50% in the study area. This 515 indicates the current unsustainable condition of nexus resources which is 0.083 will have 516 more than 50% of livelihoods vulnerability and need serious stakeholder intervention in 517 the area. 518 In order to measure the extent of nexus resources sustainability indicators and its impact 519 on the livelihoods of local community, we performed the spider web analysis. Figure 2a 520 shows the proximity between land and livelihoods indicator. It depicts that social and 521 financial livelihoods indicators are closer to land nexus component more than either 522 physical, human or natural indicators. This indicates that land is a social capital in which 523 household can invest with the expectation of future flow of benefits, and acts as financial 524 sources, since it has predictable value when liquidated and exchanged. 525 Water sustainability indicators is a basic condition for obtaining good social indicators 526 (Figure 2b), Plummer and Slaymaker [72], suggested that water supply and sanitation 527 links with sustainability and prevailing condition of pro-poor economic growth. In 528 addition, high availability, supply and access to water allows the population to cope with 529 livelihoods shocks and stress to achieve basic social indicators. 530 In relation to food and livelihoods indicators, the food nexus component is most linked 531 with human, physical and financial livelihoods (Figure 2d). This reveals that the 532 livelihoods of local community are the most vulnerable to the adverse effect of food 533 security. 534 After understanding the individual nexus resources effects on livelihoods, we figured out 535 the weighted average of nexus resources impact on livelihood (Figure 2e). It shows, 536 human, physical and financial livelihoods are highly sensitive for sustainability of LWEF 537 nexus resources. Pimentel, Whitecraft [2] reported that evidence on benefits of LWEF 538 system management will 539 540 reduce costs and increases benefits for both human and nature, however a deeper 552 understanding of the complex dynamics of these system, and their feedback mechanism 553 are yet to be developed by scholars. This made significant contribution to nexus resources 554 degradation which leads to vulnerability of local community. 555 Under such consequence, the rural poor community bare to the effect of uncoordinated 556 management of nexus resources. This is due to lack of nexus concept emphasis on natural 557 resources, and integrated management of sectors to be demand driven. Therefore, there 558 is a need for paradigm shift from rigid and sectorial based nexus resources management 559 for economic development and livelihoods improvement.

564
Rapid population's growth, land degradation and, climatic variability are factors 565 affecting increasing demand of water, energy and food for smallholder farmers [73], and 566 this makes food production slow thereby declining productivity. 567 Food production without keeping the causal impact of land use, water and energy indeed 568 significantly affects the total amounts of food produced, as well as related ecosystem 569 disturbances. All the nexus resources are linked with the livelihoods of local community 570 with varying extent (Figure 2). This indicates lack of understanding and trade-off among 571 nexus resources and continues to have undesirable impacts on the livelihoods. 572 Approaches that focuses narrowly on one component of the LWEF nexus without paying 573 attention to its synergies risks major unintended consequences [45]. For example, lack of 574 energy in rural area, make local community to depend on forest tress, shrub wood and 575 crop biomass as a sources of fire wood, which is becoming as silent degradation factors 576 [74]. 577 Therefore, singular approach, i.e. food centered approach cannot sustain livelihoods of 578 local community, because cascading failures in one system may occur in other [46]. Since, 579 failures in land use management lead to increase risk of failures in food productions and 580 hydrological variability. This study discovered that the livelihoods of local community in 581 the study area has been decreasing due to over dependence on fragmented land and rain-582 fed agriculture. This demonstrates that agricultural productivity without proper land use 583 management and use of water and energy sources as inputs potentially affect food 584 production. 585 Apparently, there is no effective identification of LWEF nexus resources sustainability to 586 inform local community on resources variability events so that they can plan for coping 587 and adapting to events. As shown in Table 4, the composite nexus resources index 0.083, 588 conveyed to have adequate impacts on social, human, physical, financial and natural 589 livelihoods indicators. The result shows the need for site specific planning, coordination 590 and monitoring of nexus resources, is vitally important particularly for developing 591 country like Ethiopia. Because, in the last four decades, the country has undergone 592 dynamic land use change, which remarkably affecting water, energy and food systems. 593 Individual focus on food production, may have impact in individual area of land, water 594 and energy. However, the close relationships, interaction, and interdependences among 595 these resources are usually not taken into consideration. Yet solving one challenge in 596 managing one resources often creates challenge for other resources, therefore the better 597 solution is managing nexus resources collectively using nexus approach. 598

599
Understanding LWEF nexus sustainability necessitates a readily accessible institutional 600 structure and make-up to build integrated policy. Issues on how to promote potential 601 synergies and trade-off exists among nexus resources pose great challenge to natural 602 resource management. Studies on LWEF nexus have found some useful measure to deal 603 with nexus resources trade-off [6, 13]. As an example, land use change in expense of food 604 production results in conflict between irrigation water and hydropower [5]. These seek 605 policy that sustainably intensify food production and poverty reduction measure, which 606 has profound implication for unique environmental management. 607 Policy is the main driving force for sustainable natural resources. In fact, food security 608 and growing demand of nexus resources result in unsustainable use and management of 609 nexus resources, which needs critical policy intervention. In order to address such issues, 610 a range of policy measure could be investigated to safeguard and enhance LWEF nexus. 611 These could involve regulation of land use change, reduction of inefficient use of water, 612 expansion of alternative energy sources, reduction of biomass energy sources and use of 613 technology-based approach. These efficiently resonate with sustainable livelihoods. 614 Indeed, application of integrated management of nexus resources in line with livelihoods 615 ensure environmental security. This above findings highlight implication for the 616 sustainability of LWEF nexus resources in the context of food security. 617 Lastly but not the least, sustainability of LWEF nexus resources needs synergies in policy 618 formulation when considerably food security links with livelihoods strategy. Local 619 communities are often vulnerable to social, human, physical, financial and natural 620 component of livelihoods to develop sustainable livelihoods strategy, the nexus approach 621 has become useful tool for selecting and adopting site specific policy measure to enhance 622 human-environment relation. These provide a strong evidence base for decision makers 623 to ensure sustainable use of land, water, energy and food security for livelihoods. 624

625
Sustainability of LWEF nexus resources becoming a critical resource in global, national, 626 regional and local scale, in particular. To address these challenges, in this paper we 627 present quantification and linkage analysis for sustainable LWEF nexus resources and 628 livelihoods. Using a case study design, we generated qualitative data through focus 629 groups and interviews with households and key informants representing a broad cross-630 section of actors, including participant from land use, agriculture, water and energy 631 sector. 632 It was found that LWEF nexus composite index for the study region is 0.083 indicating 633 low index. This implies there is unsustainable consumption, use and management of 634 nexus resources in the study area in which exploitation levels came to exceed resources' 635 natural regeneration. Such overexploitation ultimately threatens the livelihoods and 636 wellbeing of people who depend on these resources, and jeopardizes the health of overall 637 environment. 638 Also LWEF nexus resources had positive correlation with livelihoods, thus social (r>0.8, 639 P<0.01), natural (r>0.3, P<0.05) and physical (r>0.6, P<0.01). Additionally, this study 640 highlight that in the study area focusing on one nexus component have been encouraging 641 in the majority of sector, i.e. food production for sustainable livelihood. In summary, the 642 findings in this study imply that sustainable nexus resources can enhance livelihoods 643 sustainability. Thus, government and non-governmental organization need to adopt 644 collaborative resource management measures to improve the current nexus resources 645 insecurity. This could be attained by strong evidence based policy to ensure sustainable 646 use of nexus resources. In addition, the results provided by this study would serve as the 647 foundation for future study, policy formulation and implementation.