The Nexus Approach to Managing Water, Soil and Waste under Changing Climate and Growing Demands on Natural Resources

Lal, Rattan

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-05747-7_3

Cited by 27 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 92 publications

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“…In this study, direct interrelations between the SOM stocks in urban arable soils and urban household wastes in the rapidly urbanizing city of Kumasi have been identified. The obtained knowledge on these interrelations may strengthen the theoretical link between waste and soil sustainability, which is within the broader soil-waste-water nexus framework for sustainable resource management (Lal, 2013(Lal, , 2014Bouma, 2016). As illustrated by Drechsel et al (2007), Ghanaian cities have become nutrient hubs due to the net import of crop produce from their hinterlands.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 85%

Urbanization Leads to Increases in pH, Carbonate, and Soil Organic Matter Stocks of Arable Soils of Kumasi, Ghana (West Africa)

Asabere

Zeppenfeld

Nketia

et al. 2018

Front. Environ. Sci.

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Tropical soils typically have low cation exchange capacity and nutrient contents. Both are enhanced by soil organic matter (SOM), which is thus particularly important for the fertility of these soils. In this study, we assessed the influence of urbanization on SOM, carbonate contents and pH of arable soils of Kumasi (Ghana, West Africa), since rapid urban sprawl is widespread in West Africa, whereby in many West African cities urban farming is pivotal to the food security of their population. Based on satellite imagery for the year 1986, we defined long-term and short-term urban arable soils, whereby long-term urban soils were urban already in 1986 (thus ≥30 years, as soil sampling took place in 2016), and short-term urban soils became urban afterwards (<30 years). We took 618 undisturbed topsoil samples (0-10 cm) from 206 urban arable fields. The factors land-use (maize fields) and soil (Ferric Acrisols) were kept largely constant. The fine-earth was analyzed for pH (water), carbonate contents, loss on ignition (LOI), total C (TC) and N (TN). SOM contents were obtained from LOI (SOM LOI). All element contents were transformed to bulk soil element stocks per m 2. Differences between short-term and long-term urban soils were identified by a set of linear mixed models. Coarse fragments were more abundant in the long-term (16%) compared to the short-term (10%) urban soils, because of solid municipal waste that accumulates over time in urban soils. TC and SOM LOI concentrations of the fine earth, pH and C/N ratios were all significantly higher in the long-term urban soils. SOC concentrations in the fine earth, as well as bulk soil stocks of TC, SOC, and SOM LOI were also higher in the long-term urban soils, but at a lower degree of confidence, due to variable bulk densities and contents of coarse fragments. We conclude that dumping of organic and inorganic waste (including ash, bones, egg shells, concrete and mortar) increases SOM stocks and soil pH, but also leads to accumulation of non-degradable solid materials (including plastic, metals etc.). These findings point to the need of an improved urban waste management system, separating degradable and non-degradable waste.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 85%

Urbanization Leads to Increases in pH, Carbonate, and Soil Organic Matter Stocks of Arable Soils of Kumasi, Ghana (West Africa)

Asabere

Zeppenfeld

Nketia

et al. 2018

Front. Environ. Sci.

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“…Overall, the cases demonstrate that a cross-sectoral or Nexus Approach, such as WEF or the Water-Soil-Waste (WSW), enhances the synergies towards achieving the SDGs by improving the use-efficiency of natural resources, closing carbon and nutrient cycles and recycling waste as well as balancing the supply and demand of ecosystem services (Lal 2015). However, the success of the implementation largely depends on the coordination across sectors and society, in which a unified understanding of the interdependence of SDGs and shared benefits among users, stakeholders, and politicians must be reached (Zhang & Schwärzel 2017b;Benavides et al 2019).…”

Section: Case Study IImentioning

confidence: 99%

Sustainable development as the ultimate target of adopting a nexus approach to resources management

Caucci¹,

Zhang²,

Locher-Krause³

et al. 2020

Sustainable Development and Resource Productivity

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Resource productivity and sustainable development: Challenges and limitations The United Nations' Agenda for Sustainable Development underlines 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) with 169 targets. The lack of holistic knowledge on the interdependency between the SDGs and an interpretation of cause-and-effect relationships that connect the SDGs enormously challenges national policymakers that must implement that are in charge of implementing the 2030 agenda at the national level and achieving the goals across environmental, economic, and social dimensions (Griggs et al. 2017; Dörgo et al. 2018). The international scientific community started to measure the trade-offs and synergies between SDGs. For this exercise, it proved helpful to make use of the concept of the water-energy-food (WEF) nexus, which showed that when addressing challenges like water, energy and food security, integrated approaches to resources management across these sectors should be used and dependent resources considered equally (Hoff 2011). The WEF nexus concept is now starting to be implemented and is recognised as an essential tool for achieving and monitoring progress towards SDGs (Bleischwitz et al. 2018; Hülsmann & Ardakanian 2018). Nevertheless, the WEF is still challenged by a few limitations, in particular concerning comprehensive coverage of the interlinkages between sectors and resources (Albrecht et al. 2018). Besides, nexus assessments are only starting to address all dimensions of sustainability, including the environmental aspect, one primary reason being that ecosystem services (WEF-E) are hardly reflected in nexus tools (Hülsmann et al. 2019). This chapter aims to highlight the necessity of including innovative tools in the assessment of the WEF nexus approach to adopt resources management to achieve Sustainable development. To effectively counteract the potential trade-offs across SDGs, holistic ecosystem management and sustainable practices are required to increase resource productivity. Sector-oriented resource management often neglects the potential impacts (trade-offs and synergies

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“…The nexus approach is conceived as a way to balance conflicting sectoral objectives (Smajgl et al, 2016), enhance resource efficiency and promote policy coherence and integration (Hoff, 2011;Rasul and Sharma, 2016). The literature also expands to other domains, such as climate change, soil, waste management (Kurian and Ardakanian, 2015;Lal, 2015), and more recently, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (Boas et al, 2016;Rasul, 2016). The nexus approach, just like interplay management and policy integration (discussed below), requires conscious efforts by actors to enhance synergies and avoid conflicts among the different policy domains.…”

Section: Conceptualizing Framing and Integrationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Framing and integration in the global forest, agriculture and climate change nexus

Golcher

Visseren-Hamakers

2018

Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space

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This article contributes to the debate on Integrative Governance by studying integration in the global forest–agriculture–climate change nexus. Since the 1990s, the role of the land-use sector, in particular forests and agriculture, has become increasingly prominent in climate change debates due to its vulnerability and its contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions. Addressing agriculture, climate change and forest policies in an integrated way could therefore create important synergies and reduce trade-offs. This article aims to analyse the extent of integration in current global governance in the nexus of agriculture, forests and climate change, and to explain this extent of integration. Based on the analysis of secondary data, participation in key events and semi-structured interviews, this article concludes that efforts to enhance integration have taken different forms for the different pairs of domains (climate change–agriculture, agriculture–forest, forest–climate change) as well as for the nexus of the three. Integration has been mainly enhanced through soft law, programmes and integrative approaches (e.g. landscape approach, climate smart agriculture, agroforestry). The analysis also shows that the extent of integration among the governance systems has differed. Interplay management efforts on forests and climate change have been relatively successful. Agriculture and forest, and agriculture and climate have low and modest levels of integration respectively, except adaptation in agriculture, which enjoys higher integration levels. Differences in integration can be explained by the medium to high degrees of legalization and the (in)compatibility of the dominant frames present in the different governance systems. Furthermore, our results show that integration in a governance system with a high degree of legalisation, and dominated by one regime, as is the case in climate change, presents important challenges. In such cases, integration might have greater potential outside the intergovernmental regime through soft law approaches.

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The Nexus Approach to Managing Water, Soil and Waste under Changing Climate and Growing Demands on Natural Resources

Cited by 27 publications

References 92 publications

Urbanization Leads to Increases in pH, Carbonate, and Soil Organic Matter Stocks of Arable Soils of Kumasi, Ghana (West Africa)

Urbanization Leads to Increases in pH, Carbonate, and Soil Organic Matter Stocks of Arable Soils of Kumasi, Ghana (West Africa)

Sustainable development as the ultimate target of adopting a nexus approach to resources management

Framing and integration in the global forest, agriculture and climate change nexus

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