On June 14th, 2022 Fethi Abdelli from IRA joined the International Conference on “Soil and Water resources management for combating Desertification in drylands under Climate Change (SWDCC) for the presentation of the poster “WEFE NEXUS to ensure Water, Food, Energy and Environmental security in the Wadi Jir watershed (Matmata, Tunisia)”. This work focused on Tunisian Nexus Ecosystem Labs (NEL) Grand Challenges and the objective posed by NEXUS-NESS project. The main objective of the Wadi Jir watershed NEL is to mobilise and engage all relevant stakeholders to co-define and co-test specific Water-Energy-Food-Ecosystem Nexus plans (WEFE Nexus plans) for fair and sustainable allocation of resources. Through the NEL, local and regional stakeholders will be engaged and mobilised through participatory workshops applying the Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) Roadmap for identifying needs, prioritizing them, ideating and framing a WEFE-Nexus future, co- defining a common WEFE-Nexus common vision, co-design an action plan for moving towards this vision, implement actions, measure, and adjust the action plan and intensify actions to move even closer to the WEFE-Nexus common vision.

The primary objective of the SWDCC 2022 is to share and spread the knowledge on the impact of climate change on Soil and water resources in arid and semi-arid regions. It will serve as a platform to encourage collaboration and exchange of information, ideas and experience among environmentalists and professionals in related disciplines with particular interests in combating desertification. The conference offered the opportunity to interact and develop network in the field of combating desertification under climate change context through sharing views with experts and possible future collaboration across the world.