If one has been introduced to the cinematic universe of Theo Angelopoulos, they might recall the beauty and melancholy of its picturesque natural scenery. Actually, seven of his movies were filmed at the towof Florina and its mountainous surroundings and natural landscape, in the region of Western Macedonia, Greece. Indicative of the region’s natural beauty are the multiple Natura sited spots, lakes and mountains, such as the national park of the Prespa lakes on the threepoint of the Republic of North Macedonia, Albania and Greece. Western Macedonia is the only of the thirteen regions of Greece that does not have a coastline, while most of its surface is covered by mountainous and semi-mountainous areas.

The region hosts a total population of approximately 185,000 inhabitants. It is considered rather sparsely populated, compared to the rest of the country. Most of its population lives in rural areas, however four Greek cities are located there, Kozani, Grevena, Florina and Kastoria. The local communities of these cities and the villages share a very unique vibrant cultural signature. A highlight would definitely be their folk music bands of copper wind instruments, called chalkina, that share a magnificent traditional Balkan sound. However, the region suffers of unemployment, with one of the highest rates in the European Union, up to 19.7% for 2021.

Western Macedonia has an industrial area in Florina and another one to be constructed in Kozani. The secondary sector is very important for the regional economy, mainly due to the mining activities, the production of electric power and the fur-leather sector. 70% of country’s total power is produced in the region.  Agricultural production of high quality products, such as the Kozani yolk (saffron), the Florina peppers, wine, mushrooms, peaches, legume, potatos, sheeps and goats, dairy and barley, completes the map of economic activities.

This part of Greece showcases a series of particularities that inextricably link natural resources management to the socio-economic and environmental context of the area, especially around the energy production activity. Taken into account the upcoming decarbonization shift that aims at the decommissioning of all lignite plants by 2028 at the latest, a domino of environmental, economic and societal consequences are expected to take place in the near future. To the aforementioned implications one should also add the dependence of powerplants on freshwater resources used for cooling and the dependence of Florina heating and hot water supplying on its teleheating system that uses residual heat from the electric power generation.

Out of all these interdependencies between different systems, it can be understood that any strategic planning in natural resources management in the area is doomed to fail, unless a holistic approach is followed that involves insights from the energy, water, food production, ecosystems sectors and also examines the Green House Gas emissions that are produced by all involved activities. Such an analysis is what the scientific world, currently refers to as a Nexus analysis that initially involved water, energy and food. Nexus now has multiple definitions and approaches around the same concept of a holistic multi system approach and is extended by many research groups to also involve ecosystems, land uses, climate change, waste, soil, health, and other.

One of the emblematic EU funded projects for progress in the nexus area has been Sim4Nexus, coordinated by the Wageningen University and bringing together 26 partners and twelve case studies of regional, national, Transboundary, European and global scales. Sim4Nexus introduced a five-component nexus analysis, investigating independencies among the water, energy, food, land and climate change systems. The project aimed at increasing the understanding of how water management, food production and consumption, energy supply and land use policies are linked together, and how they relate to climate action. It developed a methodological approach that integrated bio-physical modeling, policy analysis, and socioeconomic insights to quantify the interdependencies between the five components, exploit and create synergies between policies and avoid conflicts between policies.

The national case study of Greece, ran by the University of Thessaly partner, was implemented at water district level, to address multiple temporal and spatial variability and particularities across the fourteen water districts of the country. The region of Western Macedonia corresponds to the water district with code name GR09. The project engaged interested parts, elicited useful information, exploited existing thematic models and data, simulated the physical systems and their interrelations, developed advanced integrated indicators and made an effort to provide easy to understand visualizations of these links. Finally it produced a serious game, where the player can apply various policy cards, relevant to existing policies, on the country’s water districts and run scenarios to gain an intuition on how these policies affect the complex web of resources management and Green House Gas emissions.

The nexus chord plots are one of the visualization outcomes of the project. They aim to give an insight on the importance of different interdependencies. If comparing two nexus chord plots, one can understand that the thickest the flows are, the more interdependent the nexus components are. At the figure attached, we can see the national and Western Macedonia plots. The plot of Western Macedonia is dominated by the massive flow that links energy to greenhouse gas emissions and energy to the built environment. It is the region with the largest greenhouse gas emissions and is also the region with lowest temperatures and highest heating demand. The communities in Western Macedonia are the ones that endure the effects of large greenhouse gas emissions, showcasing that emissions associated with fossil fuel power plants have an intense “localized character”, even though the power generated is fed through the grid to serve the needs of the rest of the country. We can see that these two flows are much thicker compared to the national case, suggesting that the planning of the area needs to prioritize activities that relate to these flows. Additionally to these, GR09 is the water district exerting the second biggest pressures on the country’s water resources, predominantly for agriculture producing a large percentage of the country’s agricultural products.

By playing the Sim4Nexus Serious Game for the Greek case study one can apply a series of policy cards specifically designed for the water district of Western Macedonia. These may refer to reduction of coal, increase of renewable energy, reforestation, water savings, water reuse, irrigation technologies, and crop choice shifts. The game constitutes a powerful tool to facilitate planning of resources management and the implementation of the just transition plan of Western Macedonia. The plan elaborates specialized priorities for the area that involve energy transition, climate neutrality, agriculture and agrifood development, circular

The Sim4Nexus Serious Game

economy, transportation, smart cities and land uses planning. The game can project and quantify the domino effects in many of these priorities in an integrated manner and offer science and data informed fine-tuning. The plan also prioritizes entrepreneurship and upskilling and reskilling of workers. These priorities reveal the societal and economic challenges of this complex system. The local society also needs social and economic tools to withstand the transition without falling deeper into unemployment, on the contrary to improve their livelihoods and quality of life. In order to achieve the transition and exploit it as an opportunity for improving lives, the whole quintuple helix needs to be leveraged, namely environment, academia, the civil society, industry and government.

NEXUSNET is a cost action that aims to build an international network of researchers, working with policymakers and the business sector, to better understand how the water-energy-food Nexus fosters policy coherence in the domains of water, energy and food, supporting the transition towards a circular and low-carbon economy in Europe. Focus is also on job creation, enhancing wellbeing and care for the environment. The Working Group 2 of the action is developing a thorough list of case studies on the Nexus and Nexus applications. Through this exercise it will facilitate the highlighting of success stories and failures, while mainstreaming the momentum towards integrated approaches. This service seems extremely relevant now, taking into account the unprecedented multiple impacts of the current war crisis in Europe, also in the environmental agendas. The war crisis seems to have started a domino effect starting from the energy sector and the decarbonization shift that seems to showcase multiple implications in nations’ energy security, but also the agricultural sector that is expected to be reorganized by national policies in a more deglobalized manner. NEXUNET will also bring these issues under its lenses, assessing the impact on the Nexus.