What has GoNEXUS been reading over the Summer?
The summer is a time to spend with our loved ones and catch up on reading! We have asked the GoNEXUS consortium to share with us which papers they have enjoyed reading recently and why. Check it out below.
Teresa Geidel, a researcher from Fresh Thoughts has recently discovered the article ‘The role of metrics in the governance of the water-energy-food nexus within the European Commission’ by Voelker, T., Blackstock, K., Kovacic, Z., Sindt, J., Strand, R., and Waylen, K. As a part of the GoNEXUS consortium, Teresa studies the potential of institutional change to provide solutions to nexus challenges. She is also working on the preparation of the WEFE Nexus dialogues. If we rethink governance and policymaking from a nexus perspective a lot has to change in terms of coordinating, communicating and working on the complex synergies and trade-offs that arise from it, such as how can ecosystems thrive while more water is extracted for irrigation purposes and how does artificial irrigation impact the energy consumption? This paper provided insight into the importance of considering the way we select metrics, the way we frame the nexus matters and what metrics can and can’t do. This matters for my work for GoNEXUS on institutional changes because it reminds me to be more careful about how societal and environmental impacts and trade-offs are affected by the way we frame them. It is important to create frameworks that are realistic and work for all stakeholders and are not overly complex.
Laurent Bruckmann, postdoctoral research fellow in geography at University Laval has recently read the article “Below the Radar: Data, Narratives and the Politics of Irrigation in Sub-Saharan Africa”. It highlights the importance of correctly classifying and mapping the different forms of irrigation in Africa, notably through radar-based remote sensing. It shows that large databases, such as FAO Aquastats, are insufficient to describe the diversity of irrigation forms because they are based on a centralized and modernist vision of irrigation that makes a large part of farmer-led irrigation invisible. This paper largely echoes our case study on the Senegal River, where there is also an urgent need to include the full diversity of river-based irrigation systems and livelihoods in the Nexus.
Daniele Peano, CMCC has recently read the paper “Plant phenology and global climate change: Current progresses and challenges” from Piao and colleagues. In GoNEXUS, I am working now on plant phenology, the annually recurring sequence of plant developmental stages. This paper provided me with state-of-the-art on Phenology studies and references to expand my knowledge on this topic that I’m trying to investigate in my research.
André Muller from adelphi has recently read the paper Governing for Transformative Change across the Biodiversity–Climate–Society Nexus, to better understand what transformative governance means in the Nexus context and is curious about their conceptual approach.
