NOT ANOTHER NEXUS? CRITICAL THINKING ON THE NEW SECURITY CONVERGENCE IN ENERGY, FOOD, CLIMATE AND WATER (original) (raw)
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Anatomy of a buzzword: the emergence of the ‘water-energy-food’ nexus in UK resource debates
The existence of a water-energy-food 'nexus' has been gaining significant attention in international natural resource policy debates in recent years. We argue the term 'nexus' can be currently seen as a buzzword: a term whose power derives from a combination of ambiguous meaning and strong normative resonance. We explore the ways in which the nexus terminology is emerging and being mobilised by different stakeholders in natural resource debates in the UK context. We suggest that in the UK the mobilisation of the nexus terminology can best be understood as symptomatic of broader global science-policy trends, including an increasing emphasis on integration as an ideal; an emphasis on technical solutions to environmental problems; achievement of efficiency gains and 'win-wins'; and a preference for technocratic forms of environmental managerialism. We identify and critique an 'integrative imaginary' underpinning much of the UK discourse around the concept of the nexus, and argue that attending to questions of power is a crucial but often underplayed aspect of proposed integration. We argue that while current efforts to institutionalise the language of the nexus as a conceptual framework for research in the UK may provide a welcome opportunity for new forms of transdisciplinary, they may risk turning nexus into a 'matter of fact' where it should remain a 'matter of concern'. In this vein, we indicate ways of building nexus research upon critique.
Sustainability, 2018
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...
The global governance of water, energy, and food nexus: allocation and access for competing demands
International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics, 2020
Globally, 3 billion people are without access to modern fuels or technologies for cooking/ heating, 900 million people lack access to safe water, 2.6 billion lack improved sanitation, 2 billion people lack food security intermittently, and more than 820 million people are chronically hungry due to extreme poverty. This paper on the allocation of and access to water, energy and food (WEF) nexus rests on the 'Rawlsian' conception of distributive justice to human security and the competing demands for WEF. Based on a review of papers on access and allocation published from 2008 through 2020, this paper finds that 'policy coordination' among all the actors (at all levels in general and local levels in particular) governing the water-energy-food nexus is the key to promoting equitable allocation of and access to WEF. Only legitimate governance with robust legal structures in place can provide for the equitable allocation in the WEF nexus. Effective stakeholder participation in governance of the nexus is necessary and ensured when power asymmetries, interdependencies and rights are accounted for in principles of procedural justice. Moreover, to ensure access to people in the WEF nexus, the distribution of the three goods and related rights must be delivered as a 'triplet'. This will promote the goal to mitigate trade-offs and promote synergies among the resources as well as conserve the environment within the context of the Sustainable Development Goals.
Resource nexus perspectives towards the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals
Nature Sustainability
Debate around increasing demand for natural resources is often framed in terms of a "nexus" and perhaps at risk of becoming a buzz word. A nexus between what, at what scales, and what would be the consequences? This article analyses why readers should care about the nexus concept towards the SDGs. We discuss a five-nodes definition and propose perspectives that may lead to a reload of climate policy with buy-in from supply chain managers and resourcerich developing countries. Our research perspectives address modelling approaches and scenarios at the interface of bio-physical inputs with the human dimensions of security and governance.
Water
There is an increasing appreciation that food–energy–water (FEW) nexus problems are approaching criticality in both the developing and developed world. As researchers and managers attempt to address these complex resource management issues, the concept of the FEW nexus has generated a rapidly growing footprint in global sustainability discourse. However, this momentum in the FEW nexus space could be better guided if researchers could more clearly identify what is and is not a FEW problem. Without this conceptual clarity, it can be difficult to defend the position that FEW innovations will produce desired outcomes and avoid unintended consequences. Here we examine the growing FEW nexus scholarship to critically evaluate what features are necessary to define a FEW nexus. This analysis suggests that the FEW nexus differs from sector-focused natural resource or sustainability problems in both complexity and stakes. It also motivates two new foci for research: the identification of low-d...
Routledge Handbook of the Resource Nexus
Routledge eBooks, 2017
Demand for natural resources has grown rapidly for decades, and is expected to continue growing. These trends lead to repercussions, risks, and threats for humans and ecosystems at different scales. The challenges of sustainable resource management and governance are on numerous agendas, ranging from the G7 and G20 summits to UNEP's International Resource Panel, World Economic Forum, SDG implementation, and a growing community of international scholars. Research highlights the importance of accounting for the interdependencies of resource use and sustainability goals such as eliminating hunger, mitigating climate change, and expanding energy access. There is a need to understand interdependencies and the feasibility of more integrated approaches. Debate is often framed in terms of a "nexus" between water, energy, and food (sometimes including other resources). 1 The main aim of this handbook is to come to grips with what the nexus 2 is about, provide a reference textbook with an overview, and a survey on emerging and cutting-edge research, and application of the concept. This handbook enables readers to understand (Part I), measure (Part II), assess and model (Part III), compare political economies (Part IV), learn from applications (Part V), and upscale solutions (Part VI). The handbook's six parts and 32 chapters are carefully organized around these aims. As a whole, the handbook seeks to combine analytical rigor with attempts to be transformativei.e. shaping transformations towards sustainabilityin realms of research and knowledge-making, as well as practice and implementation.
2018
This chapter makes the case for nexus thinking in the study of the international political economy of energy and resources, that is their inter-dependencies with other policy areas. It argues that it is imperative to go beyond an IPE of ‘just energy’ – rather than treating it as truly ‘discrete’ – to understand energy and resources as part of dynamic inter-relationship with other issue areas. In addition to the ones related to climate change, security and development, nexuses as identified in the chapter include the energy–technology nexus, the energy–water nexus, the energy–food nexus, or the global–local nexus in energy, all of which are increasingly identified within some global and national governance organisations and within recent scholarship. The chapter suggests that from a scholarly point of view this establishes energy as a highly complex, interconnected policy area – both in terms of how energy markets and technical regimes are constituted, their imp...
The 'Nexus' As a Step Back towards a More Coherent Water Resource Management Paradigm
The interrelationships between water resources, food production and energy security have influenced policy for many decades so the emergence of the water-food-energy 'nexus' as a proposed new focus for water resource management is surprising. It is suggested that this focus can be understood as a consequence of the decision by developed countries to ignore agreements reached at the 1992 Rio Summit on Sustainable Development and promote instead a 'Dublin IWRM', their original lobbying platform. That approach has not helped developing countries to address food, energy and water security nor assisted global businesses to expand or to manage the risks posed to their operations by poor water management. The nexus approach begins to address these concerns by focusing on a specific 'problem-shed'. While this may disintegrate the original robust concept of integrated water management, its emphasis on what water may do for society rather than what society should do for water is a step back toward a more coherent and useful paradigm.
Water, 2019
Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) is not only a prominent, globally promoted policy to foster nature conservation, but also increasingly propagated as an innovative and self-sustaining governance instrument to support poverty alleviation and to guarantee water, food, and energy securities. In this paper, we evaluate a PES scheme from a multi-scalar and political-ecology perspective in order to reveal different power dynamics across the Water-Energy-Food (WEF) Nexus perspective. For this purpose, we analyze the PES scheme implemented in the Hidrosogamoso hydropower project in Colombia. The paper shows that actors' strongly divergent economic and political power is determinant in defining how and for whom the Nexus-related water, food, and energy securities are materialized. In this case, the PES scheme and its scalar politics, as fostered by the private/public hydropower alliance, are instrumental to guaranteeing water security for the hydropower scheme, which is a crucial building-block of Colombia's energy security discourse. For this, the water and food securities of the adjacent, less powerful communities are sacrificed. Examining the on-the-ground politics of WEF Nexus is key to understanding their impact on equitable and sustainable governance of water, energy, and food in the everyday lives of millions of resource users. We conclude that politicizing the Nexus can help to trace both the flows of resources and the flows of power.
Governance and Management of the Nexus: Structures and Institutional Capacities
Change and Adaptation in Socio-Ecological Systems, 2015
globally, demanding higher consumption of energy resources; water is being overused or contaminated through both energy and food production schemes; and climate change is further pushing the planet towards environmental tipping points. Moreover, the linkages between water systems, food production, and energy systems are intertwined, which has resulted in scientific and political action to define and refine how we are addressing this nexus. Governance of this nexus is a key concern, and given the challenges and increasing attention aimed at nexus-based problems, what model for management and governance will be most efficient and equitable in each respective context? If anything is certain it is that paradigms representing segmented, rigid policies benefitting socially elite groups must be usurped and replaced by more interdependent, flexible, and equitable systems of governance and management. Sectors must cross-reference the respective needs and demands of multiple resources users, overcome tradeoffs and social barriers, and respond and adapt to new barriers. And networks must reorganize to better support more marginalized sectors such as the environment. This chapter lays out the challenges to governance in the WE -F nexus and provides concrete tools and recommendations for how to address these constraints.