Anatomy of a buzzword: The emergence of ‘the water-energy-food nexus’ in UK natural resource debates
By R. Cairns, A. Krzywoszynska. 2016
266 citations recorded by the source corpus.
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 the importance of critique to the development of nexus research.
Subfields: Global and Planetary Change, Political Science and International Relations, Water Science and Technology
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/812ca3442871af44b77f7bbca5d5099aa9a448c0
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In Global and Planetary Change
In Political Science and International Relations
In Water Science and Technology
Citations in the corpus
- Climate change and the water–energy–food nexus: insights from policy and practice in Tanzania (2018, background): “Furthermore, this ministry or department should be a powerful and legitimate actor, which often is not the case if climate change is embedded within agencies only responsible for the environment (Allan et al., 2015; Cairns & Krzywoszynska, 2016; Jones et al., 2015; Verhoeven, 2015).”
- Opportunities for knowledge co-production across the energy-food-water nexus: Making interdisciplinary approaches work for better climate decision making (2017, background): “…term is growing in use to capture the importance of integration of approaches and stakeholders in solutions to sustainability and resource challenges, Cairns and Krzywoszynska (2016) urge caution about the risk of ‘turning nexus into a “matter of fact” where it remain a ‘matter of concern” (164).”