(Re)thinking (re)connection: Young people, “natures” and the water–energy–food nexus in São Paulo State, Brazil

Abstract

This paper critically analyses pervasive contemporary discourses that call for children and young people to be “reconnected” with nature and natural resources. Simultaneously, it reflects on emerging forms of nexus thinking and policy that seek to identify and govern connections between diverse sectors, and especially water, energy and food. Both of these fields of scholarship are concerned with connections, of different kinds, and at different spatial scales. Based on a large‐scale, mixed‐method research project in São Paulo State, Brazil, this paper explores how these rather different literatures could be combined in order to (re)think notions of (re)connection that operate across different spatial, political and material registers. Through research with Brazilian professionals and young people about their experiences of, and learning about, the water–energy–food nexus, the paper makes several substantive contributions to scholarship on childhood, youth, environmental education and nexus thinking. Centrally, it is argued that, rather than dispense with them, there are manifold possibilities for expanding and complicating notions of (re)connection, which rely on a more nuanced analysis of the logistical, technical, social and political contexts in which nexuses are constituted. Thus, our work flips dominant forms of nexus thinking by privileging a “bottom‐up” analysis of (especially) young people's everyday, embodied engagements with water, food and energy. Our resultant findings indicated that young people are “connected” with natures and with the water–energy–food nexus, in both fairly conventional ways and in ways that significantly extend beyond contemporary discourses about childhoods–natures (and particularly in articulating the importance of care and community). Consequently, the nexus approach that is advocated in this paper could enable more nuanced, politically aware conceptualisations of (re)connection, both within and beyond scholarship on childhoods–natures and nexus thinking.

Blurring the ‘-ism’ in youth climate crisis activism: everyday agency and practices of marginalized youth in the Brazilian urban periphery

“…Nonetheless, we felt that the ways in which they articulate them may not match with language that we use as adults, academics, and policy-makers when attempting to discuss the current climate crisis. This however does not mean that young people are 'disconnected' from their local environment and larger issues such as climate change (Kraftl et al 2019). Rather, young people (including some in our study) may perceive the monotonous and repetitive climate discourse of adults in the government, the media, and formal education as 'boring', top-down and remote from their daily reality in the urban periphery.…”

“…It is this discourse, not the environment or climate change, which is distant and disconnected from young people's everyday realities. Youth emotional relationships to their environment may sometimes seem unconventional (Kraftl et al 2019) and possibly even contradictory; yet, they reflect young people's very own experiences, stories, and emotions. This sense of 'belonging' and 'connection' is fundamental for young people to start perceiving themselves as part of the solution.…”

Children and young people living through the monsoon: watery entanglements and fluid inequalities

“…First, children's entanglements with nature are widely debated across the social sciences. With little room to delve into the complexities of childhoodnature debates (Shillington and Murnaghan 2016;Hadfield-Hill and Zara 2019a;Kraftl et al 2019), we specifically focus on the place of water. We are drawn to an article published by the Government of South Australia whose framing of childhood and nature is very much in line with the Louvian perspective, where children and childhoods need to be reconnected somehow with the natural environment (Louv 2003).…”

Geographies of food beyond food: transfiguring nexus-thinking through encounters with young people in Brazil

“…The development of nexus-thinking has been important in affording many notable political-technological achievements in diverse contexts (Food and Agriculture Organisation [FAO], 2014) and constituting interdisciplinary/cross-sector collaborations around contemporary global challenges. Extending critiques of the typically weak theoretical and empirical bases of nexus-thinking (Kraftl et al, 2019), however, in this paper we make three major interventions to develop new forms of nexus-thinking. First, empirically, we highlight the problematic absence of children and young people (and, by extension, other forms of social-geographical difference) from mainstream nexus-thinking.…”