Energy, water, and food are intrinsically connected, and figuring out how to increase availability of one without compromising access to the others will be a demanding policy challenge as global population heads toward 9 billion by 2050, three resource specialists agreed in a wide-ranging discussion at AAAS.

Nine billion people are expected to inhabit the Earth by 2050. But while the world population is growing, the amount of available cropland, fresh water and other key resources is not. The number of undernourished people already exceeds one billion—how do we feed the world without exacerbating environmental problems and simultaneously cope with climate change?