Anatomy of a buzzword: The emergence of ‘the water-energy-food nexus’ in UK natural resource debates

Cairns, Rose; Krzywoszynska, Anna

doi:10.1016/j.envsci.2016.07.007

Cited by 262 publications

(183 citation statements)

References 41 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

176

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…8 Rather than seeing energy, food and water resources as separate systems, nexus thinking addresses the inter-dependencies, tensions and trade-offs between these different domains, similar to the approach taken in this paper, moving beyond national, sectoral, policy and disciplinary silos to identify more efficient, equitable and sustainable ways of using scarce resources. While some have criticised the concept as little more than a contemporary 'buzzword' (Cairns and Krzywoszynska 2016) and others have promoted the value of nexus thinking in methodological terms (Stirling 2015), we are keen to put the concept to work through practical applications that explore the links between food, energy and water security at a range of geographical scales.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

An agenda for integrated system-wide interdisciplinary agri-food research

et al. 2017

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper outlines the development of an integrated interdisciplinary approach to agri-food research, designed to address the 'grand challenge' of global food security. Rather than meeting this challenge by working in separate domains or via single-disciplinary perspectives, we chart the development of a system-wide approach to the food supply chain. In this approach, social and environmental questions are simultaneously addressed. Firstly, we provide a holistic model of the agri-food system, which depicts the processes involved, the principal inputs and outputs, the actors and the external influences, emphasising the system's interactions, feedbacks and complexities. Secondly, we show how this model necessitates a research programme that includes the study of land-use, crop production and protection, food processing, storage and distribution, retailing and consumption, nutrition and public health. Acknowledging the methodological and epistemological challenges involved in developing this approach, we propose two specific ways forward. Firstly, we propose a method for analysing and modelling agri-food systems in their totality, which enables the complexity to be reduced to essential components of the whole system to allow tractable quantitative analysis using LCA and related methods. This initial analysis allows for more detailed quantification of total system resource efficiency, environmental impact and waste. Secondly, we propose a method to analyse the ethical, legal and political tensions that characterise such systems via the use of deliberative fora. We conclude by proposing an agenda for agri-food research which combines these two approaches into a rational programme for identifying, testing and implementing the new agri-technologies and agri-food policies, advocating the critical application of nexus thinking to meet the global food security challenge.

show abstract

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

An agenda for integrated system-wide interdisciplinary agri-food research

et al. 2017

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…To begin, we need to reflect on the meaning of the term nexus in this discussion as it is used in multiple and ambiguous ways (Cairns and Krzywoszynska 2016). We use the term as an analytical concept to theorize the various mediating factors that influence the causal pathway linking environmental change to social conflict.…”

Section: From Environmental Change To Social Conflict: Causal Mechanismsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Environmental change and social conflict: the northeast Atlantic mackerel dispute

2017

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

A recurrent critique of the proposition of a causal relation between environmental change and social conflict is that it fails to account for the complexities and dynamics of processes of social-ecological change. In this article, we open the black box of contextual factors that influence the causal pathway from environmental change to social conflict. Firstly, we argue for the consideration of three social factors that influence that pathway: (a) institutions, (b) power, and (c) knowledge. Taking a deductive approach, we ascertain their causal importance in the case of the "mackerel dispute," an interstate conflict that unfolded after the abrupt and rapid change in distribution of the northeast Atlantic mackerel stock after 2007. We analyze the historical development of the mackerel dispute through process tracing and demonstrate the importance and causal role of the three factors. Secondly, based on our assessment, we argue to increase the diversity of the scope conditions relevant for the environmental changesocial conflict nexus. We propose to consider a wider variety of conflicts as outcome of environmental change, highincome regions as an arena for those conflicts, and a wider variety of environmental change, such as alterations in abundance in the context of climate change. Lastly, we discuss how future research on this topic can handle the wider scope conditions and greater case variability.

show abstract

“…lack of clarity or consensus around the degree to which there is a recognizable 'nexus methodology'." ( [22], p. 166). The WEF Nexus also does not seem to be clear regarding a boundary that marks something like a water-energy-food system (see also Section 2.5).…”

Section: The Rationale For Framing the Boundaries Of Resource Flowsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Making the Water–Soil–Waste Nexus Work: Framing the Boundaries of Resource Flows

et al. 2017

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Abstract:The Sustainable Development Goals have placed integrated resources management, such as integrated water resource management, at the heart of their targets. The upcoming "International Decade for Action-Water for Sustainable Development", 2018-2028 has highlighted the importance of promoting efficient water usage at all levels, taking into account the water, food, energy, and environmental nexus. While integrated resource management approaches have been defined and applied for decades, nexus approaches are more recent. For these latter approaches to be implemented on the ground, their system boundaries need to be clarified. While the Water-Energy-Food Nexus focuses on sectors, the Water-Soil-Waste Nexus addresses linkages between environmental resources-namely water, soil and waste-to tackle sustainable management. In this paper, we analyzed integrated management systems and how their system boundaries are defined. From this we determined that in order for system boundaries to be applicable, they should be clear, wide and flexible. Based on this, we propose the boundary of the Water-Soil-Waste Nexus system. We use two case studies to exemplify the usefulness of these system boundaries.

show abstract

Anatomy of a buzzword: The emergence of ‘the water-energy-food nexus’ in UK natural resource debates

Cited by 262 publications

References 41 publications

An agenda for integrated system-wide interdisciplinary agri-food research

An agenda for integrated system-wide interdisciplinary agri-food research

Environmental change and social conflict: the northeast Atlantic mackerel dispute

Making the Water–Soil–Waste Nexus Work: Framing the Boundaries of Resource Flows

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About