Water scarcity in England and Wales as a failure of (meta)governance

Gareth Walker
School of Geography and Environment, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom; garethlwalker@gmail.com

ABSTRACT: The water crisis is often said to be a crisis of governance failure rather than of availability per se; yet the sources of this failure are poorly understood. This paper examines contemporary water scarcity in England and Wales as a failure of ecological modernity, in which technical and institutional innovation is promoted as a means of increasing economic efficiency in the allocation and use of water resources. The role of the state in fostering this innovation is explored through exploring a shift from ‘government’ to ‘governance’. The paper employs Jessop’s theory of meta-governance to examine governance failure. Meta-governance represents the capacity of the state to flank or support the emergence of specific forms of governance through mobilising material or symbolic resources. Three sources of governance failure are explored: (1) the nature of capitalist exchange and its resulting production of nature, (2) the political dimensions implicit in meta-governance, and (3) the nature of governance as a task of self-organisation. The model is then applied to the rise of water scarcity in England and Wales from the 1970s to the present day. The utility of the model in analysing governance failure is discussed.

KEYWORDS: Water scarcity, water governance, meta-governance, water privatisation, England and Wales

Organisational modalities of farmer-led irrigation development in Tsangano District, Mozambique

Francis Nkoka
World Bank, Lilongwe, Malawi; fnkoka@gmail.com

Gert Jan Veldwisch
Water Resources Management Group of Wageningen University, Wageningen, the Netherlands; gertjan.veldwisch@wur.nl

Alex Bolding
Water Resources Management Group of Wageningen University, Wageningen, the Netherlands; alex.bolding@wur.nl

ABSTRACT: This paper examines the organisational modalities of farmer-led irrigation systems in Tsangano, Mozambique, which has expanded over large areas with minimal external support. By looking at their historic development trajectories and the integrated nature of land and water resources, technological objects, and people three organisational modalities of irrigation system O&M are distinguished for furrow systems in Tsangano: communal systems, former Portuguese systems, and family systems. Each organisational modality is based on a particular development/investment history through which hydraulic property relations have been established and sustained.The findings cast serious doubts on the central tenets of neo-institutional policy prescriptions. This is particularly relevant as there is a renewed interest in large-scale irrigation development in Africa through public investment, after very limited investments between 1985 and 2005. Public irrigation investment in Africa has been widely perceived to have performed poorly. Farmer-led irrigation development, as studied in this paper, could be the basis for a cost-effective alternative to scale investments that can result in sustainable and pro-poor smallholder irrigation.The findings in this paper show how investments in infrastructure can create, recreate or extinguish hydraulic property and ownership relations, which can lead to collapse. Interveners should carefully investigate prior investment patterns and context-specific cultural logics that inform the sustainability of farmer-led irrigation development.

KEYWORDS: Irrigation, FMIS, farmer-led development, hydraulic property, institutional design principles, Mozambique

Bureaucratic reform in irrigation: A review of four case studies

Diana Suhardiman
International Water Management Institute (IWMI), Vientiane, Lao PDR; d.suhardiman@cgiar.org

Mark Giordano
Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, USA; mg1382@georgetown.edu

Edwin Rap
International Water Management Institute (IWMI), Cairo, Egypt; e.rap@cgiar.org

Kai Wegerich
International Water Management Institute (IWMI), Tashkent, Uzbekistan; k.wegerich@cgiar.org

ABSTRACT: Poor performance of government-managed irrigation systems persists globally. This paper argues that addressing performance requires not simply more investment or different policy approaches, but reform of the bureaucracies responsible for irrigation management. Based on reform experiences in The Philippines, Mexico, Indonesia, and Uzbekistan, we argue that irrigation (policy) reform cannot be treated in isolation from the overall functioning of government bureaucracies and the wider political structure of the states. Understanding of how and why government bureaucracies shape reform processes and outcomes is crucial to increase the actual significance of reforms. To demonstrate this, the paper links reform processes in the irrigation sector with the wider discourse of bureaucratic reform in the political science, public administration, and organisational science literature. Doing so brings to light the need for systematic comparative research on the organisational characteristic of the irrigation bureaucracies, their bureaucratic identities, and how these are shaped by various segments within the bureaucracies to provide the insights needed to improve irrigation systems performance.

KEYWORDS: Irrigation development, irrigation bureaucracies, policy reform, poor systems performance, bureaucratic reform

Inside matters of facts: Reopening dams and debates in the Netherlands

Arjen Zegwaard
Institute for Environmental Studies, Faculty of Earth and Life Sciences, VU University Amsterdam, the Netherlands and Water Resources Management Group, Wageningen University, Wageningen, the Netherlands; arjen.zegwaard@wur.nl

Philippus Wester
International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), Kathmandu, Nepal; pwester@icimod.org, and Water Resources Management Group, Wageningen University, Wageningen, the Netherlands; flip.wester@wur.nlstrong>

ABSTRACT: Both civil engineering and environmentalism strongly influenced the development of water governance in the Netherlands in the 20th century. Much research has focused on these aspects separately. This article maps the interaction between governance, technology and ecological systems in the Netherlands, to provide insights into how these are co-evolving. The analysis is based on a combination of a literature study and an empirical case study on the debates concerning the reopening of the Philipsdam, in the Southwest Delta of the Netherlands. It shows how the negotiations that took place in constructing facts in the Philipsdam case both increased the complexity of decision-making concerning the dam itself and radiated outwards to affect other parts of the Dutch water system. We conclude that the process of constructing facts and the way these are framed once they have been established as facts are both intrinsically political and reflect the multiplicity of views of how the lake works and what the problem is, and how these views are incompatible at times. As such, ontological complexity is ingrained in what is represented as facts and severely complicates an apparently matter of fact decision to reopen a dam.

KEYWORDS: Uncertainty, constructing facts, modelling through, Delta Works, the Netherlands

The productive use of rural piped water in Senegal

Ralph P. Hall
School of Public and International Affairs, Urban Affairs and Planning Program, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA; rphall@vt.edu

Eric A. Vance
Laboratory for Interdisciplinary Statistical Analysis (LISA), Department of Statistics, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA; ervance@vt.edu

Emily van Houweling
Women and Gender in International Development, Office of International Research, Education, and Development (OIRED), Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA; evh@vt.edu

ABSTRACT: Over the past decade there has been a growing interest in the potential benefits related to the productive use of rural piped water around the homestead. However, there is limited empirical research on the extent to which, and conditions under which, this activity occurs. Using data obtained from a comprehensive study of 47 rural piped water systems in Senegal, this paper reveals the extent of piped-water-based productive activity occurring and identifies important system-level variables associated with this activity. Three-quarters (74%) of the households surveyed depend on water for their livelihoods with around one-half (54%) relying on piped water. High levels of piped-water-based productive activity were found to be associated with shorter distances from a community to a city or paved road (i.e. markets), more capable water system operators and water committees, and communities that contributed to the construction of the piped water system. Further, access to electricity was associated with higher productive incomes from water-based productive activities, highlighting the role that non-water-related inputs have on the extent of productive activities undertaken. Finally, an analysis of the technical performance of piped water systems found no statistically significant association between high vs. low levels of productive activity and system performance; however, a positive relationship was found between system performance and the percentage of households engaged in productive activities.

KEYWORDS: Multiple-use water services, domestic plus, technical performance, water committee capacity, rural piped water, Senegal

Water, cities and peri-urban communities: Geographies of power in the context of drought in northwest Mexico

Rolando E. Díaz-Caravantes
El Colegio de Sonora, Hermosillo, Sonora, México; rdiaz@colson.edu.mx

Margaret Wilder
University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA; mwilder@u.arizona.edu

ABSTRACT: The urban-peri-urban interaction is frequently studied with a focus on the necessities of urban expansion, chronicling the concerns of land annexation, housing construction and infrastructure. However, in arid regions such as Mexicoʼs drought-prone northwest, the research on peri-urban issues must increasingly focus on the under-examined issue of the power geometries that are reshaping the contours of access to water in fast-growing areas. This paper examines geographies of power of the urban-rural interface in Sonora, Mexico. Focused in the political ecology framework, we compare the success of Hermosilloʼs water supply projects while analysing some cases of peri-urban water users and grouping them into three general types: negotiation, passiveness and resistance, with large powerful water users, referred to in this paper as 'counterpoint cases'. We argue that urban water augmentation strategies reveal a distinct set of urban-peri-urban relations of unequal social power where peri-urban water resources are transferred to urban areas; reflecting, over the last three decades (1981-2010), the demands of powerful, politically connected urban populations and large irrigation districts. While during the same period, peri-urban small-scale communal farmers or ejidatarios lost access to their water as it was moved or used to supply the needs of Hermosilloʼs expansion.

KEYWORDS: Water, geography, power, peri-urban, ejidos, Mexico

Desalination and water security: The promise and perils of a technological fix to the water crisis in Baja California Sur, Mexico

Jamie McEvoy
Department of Earth Sciences, Montana State University, Bozeman, MT, USA; jamie.mcevoy@montana.edu

ABSTRACT: Across the globe, desalination is increasingly being considered as a new water supply source. This article examines how the introduction of desalinated water into the municipal water supply portfolio has affected water security in the coastal tourist city of Cabo San Lucas in Baja California Sur (BCS), Mexico. It also analyses the competing discourses surrounding desalination in the region and discusses alternative water management options for achieving water security. This article challenges the notion that desalination is an appropriate and sufficient technological solution for arid regions. The findings provide evidence of increased yet delimited water security at a neighbourhood scale while identifying new vulnerabilities related to desalination, particularly in the context of the global South. This article concludes that implementing a technological fix on top of a water management system that is plagued with more systemic and structural problems does little to improve long-term water management and is likely to foreclose or forestall other water management options. This multi-scalar analysis contributes to the emerging literature on water security by considering both a narrow and broad framing of water security and identifying a range of factors that influence water security.

KEYWORDS: Water security, desalination, adaptive water management, Los Cabos, Baja California Sur, Mexico

Coyotes, concessions and construction companies: Illegal water markets and legally constructed water scarcity in central Mexico

Nadine Reis
Department of Geography, University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany; nreis@uni-bonn.de

ABSTRACT: Many regions of (semi)arid Mexico, such as the Valley of Toluca, face challenges due to rapid growth and the simultaneous overexploitation of groundwater. The water reform of the 1990s introduced individual water rights concessions granted through the National Water Commission (Comisión Nacional del Agua, or CONAGUA). Since then, acquiring new water rights in officially 'water-scarce' aquifers is only possible through official rights transmissions from users ceding their rights. With the law prohibiting the sale of water rights, a profitable illegal market for these rights has emerged. The key actor in the water rights allocation network is the coyote, functioning as a broker between a) people wanting to cede water rights and those needing them, and b) the formal and informal spheres of water rights allocation. Actors benefitting from water rights trading include the coyote and his 'working brigades', water users selling surplus rights, and (senior and lower-level) staff in the water bureaucracy. The paper concludes that legally constructed water scarcity is key to the reproduction of illegal water rights trading. This has important implications regarding the current push for expanding regularisation of groundwater extraction in Mexico. Currently, regularisation does not counter overexploitation, while possibly leading to a de facto privatisation of groundwater.

KEYWORDS: Water rights, water markets, groundwater concessions, water scarcity, Mexico

New arenas of engagement at the water governance-climate finance nexus? An analysis of the boom and bust of hydropower CDM projects in Vietnam

Mattijs Smits
Environmental Policy Group, Wageningen University; Wageningen, the Netherlands; mattijs.smits@wur.nl

Carl Middleton
MA in International Development Studies Program, Faculty of Political Science, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand; carl.chulalongkorn@gmail.com

ABSTRACT: This article explores whether new arenas of engagement for water governance have been created and utilised following the implementation of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) in large hydropower projects in Vietnam. Initial optimism for climate finance – in particular amongst Northern aid providers and private CDM consultants – resulted in a boom in registration of CDM hydropower projects in Vietnam. These plans, however, have since then busted. The article utilises a multi-scale and multi-place network governance analysis of the water governance-climate finance nexus, based on interviews with government officials, consultants, developers, NGOs, multilateral and international banks, and project-affected people at the Song Bung 2 and Song Bung 4 hydropower projects in Central Vietnam. Particular attention is paid to how the place-based nature of organisations shapes the ability of these actors to participate in decision-making. The article concludes that the CDM has had little impact on water governance in Vietnam at the project level in terms of carbon reduction (additionality) or attaining sustainable development objectives. Furthermore, whilst climate finance has the potential to open new, more transparent and more accountable arenas of water governance, current arenas of the water governance-climate finance nexus are 'rendered technical', and therefore often underutilised and inaccessible to civil society and project-affected people.

KEYWORDS: Water governance, Clean Development Mechanism, hydropower, arenas of engagement, Vietnam

Spatial displacement and temporal deferral: Toward an alternative explanation of the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint Basin water conflict

Johnny King Alaziz Wong
College of Geosciences, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, US; jwong@mail.usf.edu

M. Martin Bosman
College of Geosciences, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, US; bosman@usf.edu

ABSTRACT: The Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint (ACF) River Basin conflict officially began in 1989 and despite ongoing declarations of readiness to seek a negotiated outcome to the conflict, there is still no end in sight. In fact, 2014 marks the 25th anniversary of this conflict. In this paper, we depart from conventional explanations of the crisis and propose an alternative theoretical point of entry to draw attention to the key structural forces driving water accumulation strategies in the basin. In doing so, we turn to David Harvey’s theoretical framework of capitalist growth and crisis to present an alternative understanding of the water conflict. By adopting this framework, we will reveal how the most dominant political and economic actor in the conflict, metro-Atlanta, has devised a series of spatial and temporal strategies to delay and displace a resolution while simultaneously using the impasse to entrench its economic and territorial interests to secure as much water as possible from the ACF water basin. The paper emphasises the crisis of capitalism in the form of suburbanisation in metro-Atlanta as the primary context in which the water conflict exists.

KEYWORDS: Water conflicts, capitalism, spatiotemporal fix, switching crisis, accumulation by dispossession, ACF conflict

Technical veil, hidden politics: Interrogating the power linkages behind the nexus

Jeremy Allouche
Institute of Development Studies, STEPS Centre, Brighton, UK; j.allouche@ids.ac.uk

Carl Middleton
MA in International Development Studies Program, Faculty of Political Science, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand; carl.chulalongkorn@gmail.com

Dipak Gyawali
Nepal Academy of Science and Technology, Kathmandu, Nepal; dipakgyawali@ntc.net.np

ABSTRACT: The nexus is still very much an immature concept. Although it is difficult to disagree with a vision of integration between water, food and energy systems, there are fewer consensuses about what it means in reality. While some consider its framing to be too restrictive (excluding climate change and nature), particular actors see it as linked to green economy and poverty reduction, while others emphasise global scarcity and value chain management. The nexus debates, however, mask a bigger debate on resource inequality and access, contributing to social instability. Indeed, the market-technical framing of the nexus by the World Economic Forum, located in international business imperatives and global neoliberal policy hides political issues such as inequality, the manufacture of scarcity and international political economy and geopolitics. By addressing these, we then propose a new framing of the nexus.

KEYWORDS: Nexus, scarcity, politics, technology, systems approach

Competition, conflict, and compromise: Three discourses used by irrigators in England and their implications for the co-management of water resources

Luke Whaley
Cranfield Water Science Institute, Cranfield University, Cranfield, Bedfordshire, UK; l.whaley@cranfield.ac.uk

Edward K. Weatherhead
Cranfield Water Science Institute, Cranfield University, Cranfield, Bedfordshire, UK; k.weatherhead@cranfield.ac.uk

ABSTRACT: In this paper we use discourse analysis to explore the current dynamic that exists among farmer irrigators in England, and between irrigators and water managers in order to understand the potential for co-management to develop. To do this we employ two concepts from the field of critical discursive psychology – 'interpretive repertoires' and 'subject positions' – and apply them to a qualitative analysis of 20 interviews with farmers who are members of irrigator groups and two focus group discussions with farmers thinking about forming an irrigator group. The findings reveal that the participants drew upon three interpretive repertoires when talking about the relationship between farming and water resources management, namely the 'competition', 'conflict', and 'compromise' repertoires, with the latter being the least dominant. We situate the repertoires in their wider historical context to reveal the ideological forces at play, and conclude that the relative dominance of the competition and conflict repertoires serve as a barrier to co-management. In particular, this is because they engender low levels of trust and reinforce a power dynamic that favours individualism and opposition. At the same time, the less-dominant compromise repertoire challenges the power of the other two, providing some hope of achieving more participatory forms of water resources management in the future. To this end, we discuss how the restructuring of current agri-environment schemes and government water programmes may be used to promote the adoption and institutionalisation of the compromise repertoire in order to facilitate the emergence of co-management.

KEYWORDS: Water resources, co-management, farming, discourse, power, England

Power-sharing in the English lowlands? The political economy of farmer participation and cooperation in water governance

Luke Whaley
Cranfield Water Science Institute, Cranfield University, Cranfield, Bedfordshire, UK; l.whaley@cranfield.ac.uk

Edward K. Weatherhead
Cranfield Water Science Institute, Cranfield University, Cranfield, Bedfordshire, UK; k.weatherhead@cranfield.ac.uk

ABSTRACT: Participatory and cooperative forms of water governance have become regular features of government discourse and stated policy objectives in England. We consider this aspiration from the perspective of farmers in the English lowlands, by analysing the current power dynamic that exists among these farmers, and between them and the key stakeholders involved in water management. To do this we undertake a political economy analysis that places lowland farming and water governance within the evolution of historical processes that, over time, have influenced the ability of farmers to participate in the governance of their water environment. These historical developments are interpreted through the lens of the Power Cube, an analytical tool for thinking about the interplay between different forms of power operating in different types of spaces and at different levels of governance. Our findings reveal that, despite there being a number of structural changes that provide lowland farmers with the opportunity to participate and cooperate in water governance, three distinct barriers stand in the way. These relate to the power 'within' these farmers, which continues to align with a productivist ideology founded on individualism and competition, often at the expense of the environment; the power that government water managers still exercise 'over' farmers instead of 'with' them; and the relationship between lowland farming and environmental interests, where historically the two sides’ power 'to' act has been diametrically opposed. The findings point to the importance of developing suitable programmes designed to support and incentivize farmer participation and cooperation.

KEYWORDS: Power Cube, participation and cooperation, water governance, farming, lowland England

Social norms in water services: Exploring the fair price of water

Ossi Heino
Tampere University of Technology, Department of Chemistry and Bioengineering, Tampere, Finland; ossi.heino@tut.fi

Annina Takala
Tampere University of Technology, Department of Chemistry and Bioengineering, Tampere, Finland; annina.takala@tut.fi

ABSTRACT: The aim of this article is to analyse price fairness in water services. Although a considerable amount of literature has been published on water pricing, these studies have mainly approached the question from instrumental and rational perspectives. Little attention has been paid to the human side of water pricing. Therefore, the general objective of this research is to shed light on these softer factors, filling the gap in knowledge of the emotional connections with water services. In this research, we explored peopleʼs ideas and views about water pricing by conducting 74 interviews in 11 municipalities in Finland. The results suggest that people are not just rational consumers of a good but also have emotional ties to water utilities and municipal decision-making. The general attitude towards a water utility is confident and sympathetic if its operations and municipal decision-making processes are considered as fair, and conversely, unsympathetic if operations and decision-making are considered unfair. This is a topical issue as many water utilities are facing pressures to increase water prices; being fair appeared to be a crucial way to gain appreciation and support through difficult times. Because fairness seems to be an emergent property of social experiences, special attention should be paid to the 'soft side' of water services.

KEYWORDS: Water services, water pricing, price fairness, social norms, Finland

The rise and implications of the water-energy-food nexus in Southeast Asia through an environmental justice lens

Carl Middleton
MA in International Development Studies Program, Faculty of Political Science, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand; carl.chulalongkorn@gmail.com

Jeremy Allouche
Institute of Development Studies, STEPS Centre, Brighton, UK; j.allouche@ids.ac.uk

Dipak Gyawali
Nepal Academy of Science and Technology, Kathmandu, Nepal; dipakgyawali@ntc.net.np

Sarah Allen
Department of Geography, Faculty of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies, York University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada; saallen@yorku.ca

ABSTRACT: This article maps the rise of the water-energy-food 'nexus' as a research, policy and project agenda in mainland Southeast Asia. We argue that introducing the concept of environmental justice into the nexus, especially where narratives, trade-offs and outcomes are contested, could make better use of how the nexus is framed, understood and acted upon. With funding from high-income country donors, it is found to have diffused from a global policy arena into a regional one that includes international and regional organisations, academic networks, and civil society, and national politicians and government officials. The nexus is yet to be extensively grounded, however, into national policies and practices, and broad-based local demand for nexus-framed policies is currently limited. The article contends that if the nexus is to support stated aspirations for sustainable development and poverty reduction, then it should engage more directly in identifying winners and losers in natural resource decision-making, the politics involved, and ultimately with the issue of justice. In order to do so, it links the nexus to the concept of environmental justice via boundary concepts, namely: sustainable development; the green economy; scarcity and addressing of trade-offs; and governance at, and across, the local, national and transnational scale.

KEYWORDS: Nexus, environmental justice, sustainable development, water-energy-food, Southeast Asia

Node and regime: Interdisciplinary analysis of water-energy-food nexus in the Mekong Region

Tira Foran
CSIRO Ecosystem Sciences, Canberra, Australia; tira.foran@csiro.au

ABSTRACT: Understanding complex phenomena such as the water-energy-food nexus (resource nexus) requires a more holistic, interdisciplinary inquiry. Spurred by a sense of imbalance in approaches to the nexus dominated by integrated assessment/complex systems methodologies, I re-examine the findings and recommendations of a major 'nexus' research-for-development project in the Mekong region. The concept of 'regime of provisioning', a synthesis of social science concepts related to meso-level social order, allows essential political economy and discursive elements of the resource nexus to be analysed. I show that socio-political regimes constrain societal investment in three 'nodes' of the nexus previously identified as critical to manage sustainably: energy efficiency, wild-capture fisheries, and diversified smallholder agriculture. I discuss implications for the 'nexus' as a new policy agenda and offer three propositions for ongoing inquiry and inclusive practice.

KEYWORDS: Water, energy, food security, nexus, critical social science, complex systems, Mekong region

The 'nexus' as a step back towards a more coherent water resource management paradigm

Mike Muller
Wits University Graduate School of Public and Development Management, Johannesburg, South Africa; mikemuller1949@gmail.com

Abstract: 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 resources management is surprising. This focus is suggested to 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.

Keywords: Water resources management, food security, energy security, political economy analysis, environmental policy

Securitising sustainability? Questioning the 'water, energy and food-security nexus'

Matthias Leese
International Centre for Ethics in the Sciences and Humanities (IZEW), University of Tuebingen, Tuebingen, Germany; matthias.leese@izew.uni-tuebingen.de

Simon Meisch
International Centre for Ethics in the Sciences and Humanities (IZEW), University of Tuebingen, Tuebingen, Germany; simon.meisch@uni-tuebingen.de

ABSTRACT: The water, energy and food-security nexus approach put forward by the Bonn2011 Conference highlights the need for an integrative approach towards issues of water, energy and food, and puts them under a general framework of security. While acknowledging the need for urgent solutions in terms of sustainability, the nexus approach, at the same time, makes a normative claim to tackle the needs of the poorest parts of the world population. A closer look at the underlying rationales and proposed policy instruments, however, suggests that the primary scope of the conference proceedings is not a normative one, but one that reframes the conflict between distributional justice and the needs of the world economy under the paradigm of security. Reading this slightly shifted perspective through a Foucauldian lens, we propose that security is now put forward as the key mechanism to foster a new 'green' economy, and that the needs of the poorest are, if anything at all, a secondary effect of the proposed nexus approach.

KEYWORDS: sustainability, nexus, securitisation, green economy, development

Tackling complexity: Understanding the food-energy-environment nexus in Ethiopia’s Lake Tana sub-basin

Louise Karlberg
Stockholm Environment Institute, Stockholm, Sweden; louise.karlberg@sei-international.org

Holger Hoff
Stockholm Environment Institute, Stockholm, Sweden; holger.hoff@sei-international.org

Tedasse Amsalu
Institute for Land Administration, Bahir Dar University, Bahir Dar, Ethiopia; tadesse_2@yahoo.co.uk

Kim Andersson
Stockholm Environment Institute, Stockholm, Sweden; kim.andersson@sei-international.org

Taylor Binnington
Stockholm Environment Institute, Somerville, MA, USA; taylor.binnington@sei-international.org

Francisco Flores-López
Stockholm Environment Institute, Davis, CA, USA; franscisco.flores@sei-international.org

Annemarieke de Bruin
Stockholm Environment Institute, University of York, Heslington, York, UK; annemarieke.debruin@sei-international.org

Solomon Gebreyohannis Gebrehiwot
Ethiopian Institute of Water Resources, Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia; solomon.gebreyohannies@slu.se

Birhanu Gedif
Geospatial Data and Technology Centre (GDTC), Bahir Dar University, Bahir Dar, Ethiopia; birhanu1968@gmail.com

Oliver Johnson
Stockholm Environment Institute, c/o ICRAF, Nairobi, Kenya; oliver.johnson@sei-international.org

Friedrich zur Heide
GFA Consulting Group, Hamburg, Germany; Friedrich.zurHeide@gfa-group.de

Maria Osbeck
Stockholm Environment Institute, Stockholm, Sweden; maria.osbeck@sei-international.org

Chuck Young
Stockholm Environment Institute, Davis, CA, USA; chuck.young@sei-international.org

ABSTRACT: Ethiopia has embarked upon a rapid growth and development trajectory aiming to become a middle-income country by 2025. To achieve this goal, an agricultural development led industrialization strategy is being implemented which aims to intensify and transform agriculture, thereby boosting yields and, subsequently, economic returns. At the same time, the energy use which currently consists of more than 90% traditional biomass use is shifting towards increasing electricity production predominantly from large-scale hydropower plants, with the aim to improve access to modern energy sources. While the targets are commendable it is not clear that either all direct impacts or potential conflicts between goals have been considered. In this paper we evaluate and compare the impacts of alternative development trajectories pertaining to agriculture, energy and environment for a case-study location, the Lake Tana Subbasin, with a focus on current national plans and accounting for cross-sector interlinkages and competing resource use: the food-energy-environment nexus. Applying a nexus toolkit (WEAP and LEAP) in participatory scenario development we compare and evaluate three different future scenarios. We conclude that the two processes – agricultural transformation and energy transition – are interdependent and could be partly competitive. As agriculture becomes increasingly intensified, it relies on more energy. At the same time, the energy system will, at least in the foreseeable future, continue to be largely supported by biomass, partly originating from croplands. Two outstanding dilemmas pertaining to resources scarcity were identified. Water needed for energy and agricultural production, and to sustain ecosystem services, sometimes exceeds water availability. Moreover, the region seems to be hitting a biomass ceiling where the annual increments in biomass from all terrestrial ecosystems are in the same order of magnitude as biomass needs for food, fodder and fuel. We propose that a stakeholder-driven nexus approach, underpinned by quantitative and spatially explicit scenario and planning tools, can help to resolve these outstanding dilemmas and can support more consistent policy and decision making, towards improved resource productivities, lower environmental pressures and enhanced human securities.

KEYWORDS: Energy transition, agricultural intensification and transformation, WEAP-LEAP, participatory scenario development, Ethiopia

The water-energy-food security nexus through the lenses of the value chain and the Institutional Analysis and Development frameworks

Sergio Villamayor-Tomas
Division of Resource Economics, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany; villamas@agrar.hu-berlin.de

Philipp Grundmann
Leibniz Institute for Agricultural Engineering, Potsdam, Germany; pgrundmann@atb-potsdam.de

Graham Epstein
The Vincent and Elinor Ostrom Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA; gepstein@indiana.edu

Tom Evans
Department of Geography and Ostrom Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA; evans@indiana.edu

Christian Kimmich
Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL, Birmensdorf, Switzerland, and Division of Resource Economics, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany; christian.kimmich@wsl.ch

ABSTRACT: A number of frameworks have been used to study the water-food-energy nexus; but few of these consider the role of institutions in mediating environmental outcomes. In this paper we aim to start filling that gap by combining insights from the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework and value chain analysis. Specifically we study food, energy and water value chains as networks of action situations (NAS) where actorsʼ decisions depend not only on the institutional structure of a particular situation but also on the decisions made in related situations. Although the IAD framework has developed a solid reputation in the policy sciences, empirical applications of the related NAS concept are rare. Value-chain analysis can help drawing the empirical boundaries of NAS as embedded in production processes. In this paper we first use value-chain analysis to identify important input-output linkages among water, food and energy production processes, and then apply the IAD-NAS approach to better understand the effect of institutions within and across those processes. The resulting combined framework is then applied to four irrigation-related case studies including: the use of energy for water allocation and food production in an irrigation project in Spain; the production and allocation of treated water for food and bioenergy production in Germany; the allocation of water for food production and urban use in Kenya; and the production and allocation of energy for food production in Hyderabad, India. The case analyses reveal the value of the framework by demonstrating the importance of establishing linkages across energy, water and food-related situations and the ways in which institutions limit or facilitate synergies along the value chains.

KEYWORDS: Water-energy-food nexus, Institutional Analysis and Development framework, Socio-Ecological Systems Framework, value-chain analysis, irrigation cases