This article explores the water, energy and food nexus in Central Asia as an avenue to seek regional solutions to common challenges. A benefit-sharing scheme was in place between the countries in the Central Asia in the Soviet Union era, but since independence unilateral action has been the norm. It is concluded that a regional integrative approach would be beneficial in the water, energy and food nexus. Collaborative options include exploring existing regional frameworks with a focus on additional investment in hydropower power generation, regional power market development, irrigation reforms, and addressing regional environmental public goods such as water flows and quality.

Current approaches to environmental protection and development on land, along rivers and coastal zones, and in marine environments are struggling to effectively promote sustainability. This is partly due to limited understanding of how ecosystems are linked, and partly due to fragmented governance and management arrangements in the continuum from source to sea that hinders cooperation and strategic overview across connected systems. Meanwhile, the key flows that link ecosystems are being altered by climate change and by an intensification of human activities, which are also expanding offshore where management regimes are typically weak or nonexistent. This paper presents a conceptual framework to guide the design of future initiatives aimed at supporting green and blue growth in source-to-sea systems. It includes a taxonomy of key flows, elements to guide analysis and planning and a common framework for elaborating a theory of change. Assembling a governance baseline and engaging stakeholders are critical elements in the approach. The conceptual framework builds on recent experiences of pro-sustainability action in source-to-sea systems around the world, and the paper applies the theory of change framework to selected case studies in order to develop further insights.Keywords: Governance; Integrated management; Marine; River basin; Sustainable development; System linkages This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0), which permits copying, adaptation and redistribution for non-commercial purposes, provided the contribution is distributed under the same licence as the original, and the original work is properly cited

Growing demand for water leads to increased competition between water users. A holistic, participatory and decentralized water management approach is promoted to reach a fair allocation mechanism between competing water uses. Domestic political discourse has a strong influence on water policies being developed.

This paper proposes a generic consultative process for undertaking Strategic Environmental Assessments (SEA) in a transboundary river basin context to bring up front environmental and social issues of major development programs into the transboundary planning, project development and investment finance processes. The paper demonstrates through an analysis of two case studies from the Nile Basin in East and North Africa how an SEA approach with a focus on hydropower development is a transparent pre-investment tool that allows for consensus building in support of transboundary and regional strategic decision making and integration. Further, it demonstrates how an SEA can guide public and private sector investors seeking to develop the power sector in general and hydropower options in particular by allowing for a first level understanding of challenges and opportunities of power development and the development scenarios preferred by riparian governments.

This paper proposes a generic consultative process for undertaking Strategic Environmental Assessments (SEA) in a transboundary river basin context to bring up front environmental and social issues of major development programs into the transboundary planning, project development and investment finance processes. The paper demonstrates through an analysis of two case studies from the Nile Basin in East and North Africa how an SEA approach with a focus on hydropower development is a transparent pre-investment tool that allows for consensus building in support of transboundary and regional strategic decision making and integration. Further, it demonstrates how an SEA can guide public and private sector investors seeking to develop the power sector in general and hydropower options in particular by allowing for a first level understanding of challenges and opportunities of power development and the development scenarios preferred by riparian governments.