Perception and Representation of the Resource Nexus at the Interface between Society and the Natural Environment

Abstract

Recent years have seen an explosion of interest in the resource nexus. This has created the co-existence of different understandings and uses of the concept. In this regard, experiences in the EU H2020 project 'Moving towards adaptive governance in complexity: Informing nexus security' are consistent with findings reported in the literature: (i) The inconvenient message of the nexus is difficult to get across, it being incompatible with the currently dominant rosy narratives about sustainability. Indeed, from a historic perspective, the nexus can be seen as a revival of the ideological fight between cornucopians and neo-Malthusians; (ii) Silo structures in existing institutions are a problem for the governance of the nexus, and so is the resulting reductionist strategy of addressing and fixing one issue at the time; (iii) Scientific inquiry is currently not providing the quality inputs needed for a meaningful discussion of the resource nexus. Entanglement of resource flows is rooted in the complex metabolic pattern of social-ecological systems, the analysis of which requires a complex systems approach and relational analysis. Contemporary reductionist models simply make the nexus invisible to the analyst.

Landscape Agroecology. The Dysfunctionalities of Industrial Agriculture and the Loss of the Circular Bioeconomy in the Barcelona Region, 1956–2009

“…For several reasons, ELIA-based landscape agroecology is a novel application of MuSIASEM [9,33]: for its flow-fund analytical approach, for the inter-functionality between funds, and for the integration of landscape functions and services, agrarian studies, and social metabolism. Moreover, MuSIASEM applies nexus analysis [46], and here we do so by exploring the multiple nexuses between livestock, land-uses, and landscapes. In summary, the multi-scale spatial explicitation of energy flows and the nexus across different agroecosystem funds are the fundamental bricks of landscape agroecology.…”

An Integrated Approach to Determining the Capacity of Ecosystems to Supply Ecosystem Services into Life Cycle Assessment for a Carbon Capture System

“…Water depletion m 3 The flow-fund ratios, shown in Table 9, allow to obtain the size and quality of ecosystems, which depend on the existence of favorable boundary conditions in a territory to supply ecosystem services, to be identified. This consideration is important because the EFs require a dynamic budget or hypercycle to carry out their metabolism [46,47] to continue with the function of the supply of ecosystem services. With this data, there is now a threshold area concerning the ecological funds that the CHP plant requires to operate and fulfill its function of supplying electricity and steam to its users.…”

“…On the other hand, when multiple dimensions (technological, ecological, economic) and multiple periods (years, decades) and scales (national, regional, local) are considered in the assessment of sustainability for a process, city, or region and its WEF nexus, such as the one performed by MuSIASEM, it is possible to obtain a comprehensive view [6]. In this way, it is possible to assess the biophysical constraints on the supply side and the environmental impact on the sink side in socio-ecological systems (SES) through the addition of the flow-fund (FF) model [14], relational analysis [45,46], and the non-equilibrium thermodynamics of the social-ecological system [15], the pillars of MuSIASEM.…”

I Want to Tell You a Story: How Narrative Water Ethics Contributes to Re-theorizing Water Politics

“…For instance, the EU project MAGIC applies this perspective to narratives on future water security [113]. The project succeeds in anticipating possible water futures and in identifying and excluding unrealistic narratives as technoscientific fantasies [109,114,115].…”