Tackling Trade-offs in the Nexus of Water, Energy and Food

Pittock, Jamie; Orr, Stuart; Stevens, Lucy; Aheeyar, M. M. M.; Smith, Mark

doi:10.1016/j.aqpro.2015.10.008

Cited by 36 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…The link between the two approaches-WEF-NEXUS and IWRM-has been widely acknowledged indeed [13][14][15][16][17]. As shown in Table 1, the similarities between the two are numerous: in both concepts, participatory approaches are encouraged to address integrated management problems.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Key Issues of Interdisciplinary NEXUS Governance Analyses: Lessons Learned from Research on Integrated Water Resources Management

Hagemann

Kirschke

2017

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Abstract:Governance has become a cornerstone in addressing complex linkages between multiple resources such as water, energy, and food. However, contributions of governance research in interdisciplinary research projects are either lacking or highly controversial. Drawing on Integrated Water Resources Management-related experiences of German research projects in emerging and developing countries, we demonstrate how to strengthen NEXUS-related governance analyses: There has to be a stronger focus on the analyses of existing and useful governance strategies as well as of conditions for governance transitions; governance analyses should refer to different types of problems, instead of only focusing on single cases and abstract analyses; and answers must be based on a more elaborate practice of inter-and transdisciplinary research. These suggestions should be implemented on the level of single researchers, but should also require incentives on an institutional level.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Key Issues of Interdisciplinary NEXUS Governance Analyses: Lessons Learned from Research on Integrated Water Resources Management

Hagemann

Kirschke

2017

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“…Indeed, many of the authors addressing the nexus from a social perspective warn about the possible negative consequences that a technocratic approach can imply [1,20,22,24,25,33,34]. Examples of this type of concern include neglect of the issue of livelihood and inequity [20,24,34,35], neglect of the environment [20], and lack of transparency [34]. Verhoeven [25] explicitly suggests that the choice of a deliberately apolitical identity in the framing of the nexus is used as a strategy for ignoring the implications of power asymmetries.…”

Section: The Ideological Struggle Over the Implications Of The Nexusmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This integration and coordination process has to be extended to policy fields [17,24,26], explicitly address the environment and future generations [20,24], and balance the different goals and interests of the parties using water-energy-food (WEF) resources [24,30]. Last but not least, the process of governance has to be able to preserve its legitimacy: "integrated and multi-objective planning and transparent processes are vital in order to avoid public distrust in implementing new projects and also to ensure fair and equitable access to water by different users" [34].…”

Section: The Different Understandings and Usages Of The Term Nexusmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…There is general consensus in the literature on the nexus that it is urgent to improve the quality of both the scientific inquiry about the nexus and the integration of policies and actions in the water, energy and food sectors [1,[17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][33][34][35]37]. This consensus flags a shared experience of a generalized failure of the process for generating and using scientific information for governance of the nexus.…”

Section: Governance Of the Resource Nexusmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Giampietro

2018

Sustainability

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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.

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“…Consequently, it is possible to model and quantify resource demand, costs and trends for each isolated resource/system, as well as, the dynamic interaction between different resource/system, i.e., how a stress in one Nexus system can create pressures on the other systems (Gulati et al, 2013;Kling et al, 2017). Formally, these models link different knowledge sets (models) to support evidence-based adaptive strategies (Scott et al, 2015), identify and minimize trade-offs (Pittock et al, 2015;Kurian, 2017), and maximize synergies, efficiency, while reduce risks and improve resource governance (FAO, 2014;Gallagher et al, 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Nexusing Charcoal in South Mozambique: A Proposal To Integrate the Nexus Charcoal-Food-Water Analysis With a Participatory Analytical and Systemic Tool

Martins

2018

Front. Environ. Sci.

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Nexus analysis identifies and explores the synergies and trade-offs between energy, food and water systems, considered as interdependent systems interacting with contextual drivers (e.g., climate change, poverty). The nexus is, thus, a valuable analytical and policy design supporting tool to address the widely discussed links between bioenergy, food and water. In fact, the Nexus provides a more integrative and broad approach in relation to the single isolated system approach that characterizes many bioenergy analysis and policies of the last decades. In particular, for the South of Mozambique, charcoal production, food insecurity and water scarcity have been related in separated studies and, thus, it would be expected that Nexus analysis has the potential to provide the basis for integrated policies and strategies focused on charcoal as a development factor. However, to date there is no Nexus analysis focused on charcoal in Mozambique, neither is there an assessment of the comprehensiveness and relevance of Nexus analysis when applied to charcoal energy systems. To address these gaps, this work applies the Nexus to the charcoal-food-water system in Mozambique, integrating national, regional and international studies analysing the isolated, or pairs of, systems. This integration results in a novel Nexus analysis graphic for charcoal-food-water relationship. Then, to access the comprehensiveness and depth of analysis, this Nexus analysis is critically compared with the 2MBio-A, a systems analytical and design framework based on a design tool specifically developed for Bioenergy (the 2MBio). The results reveal that Nexus analysis is "blind" to specific fundamental social, ecological and socio-historical dynamics of charcoal energy systems. The critical comparison also suggests the need to integrate the high level systems analysis of Nexus with non-deterministic, non-prescriptive participatory analysis tools, like the 2MBio-A, as a means to increase sensitivity to the specifics of charcoal systems while keeping the practical benefits of Nexus as a high level policy design tool. In conceptual terms, this integration promotes open, participatory, integrated, comprehensive and creative analysis and exploration of the Nexus across scales, disciplines and sectors, providing thus, a strong base to design inclusive, sound and robust policies, projects and strategies relating/integrating charcoal, food and water security.

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Tackling Trade-offs in the Nexus of Water, Energy and Food

Cited by 36 publications

References 9 publications

Key Issues of Interdisciplinary NEXUS Governance Analyses: Lessons Learned from Research on Integrated Water Resources Management

Key Issues of Interdisciplinary NEXUS Governance Analyses: Lessons Learned from Research on Integrated Water Resources Management

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

Nexusing Charcoal in South Mozambique: A Proposal To Integrate the Nexus Charcoal-Food-Water Analysis With a Participatory Analytical and Systemic Tool

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