The conceptual basis of water-energy-food nexus governance: systematic literature review using network and discourse analysis

Alberto Matenhauer Urbinatti; Lira Luz Benites-Lazaro; Carolina Monteiro de Carvalho; Leandro Luiz Giatti

doi:10.1080/1943815X.2020.1749086

The conceptual basis of water-energy-food nexus governance: systematic literature review using network and discourse analysis

Urbinatti, Alberto Matenhauer; Benites-Lazaro, Lira Luz; Carvalho, Carolina Monteiro de; Giatti, Leandro Luiz 2020-12-22 00:00:00 JOURNAL OF INTEGRATIVE ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES 2020, VOL. 17, NO. 2, 21–43 https://doi.org/10.1080/1943815X.2020.1749086 SPECIAL ISSUE: RETHINKING THE URBAN NEXUS The conceptual basis of water-energy-food nexus governance: systematic literature review using network and discourse analysis Alberto Matenhauer Urbinatti , Lira Luz Benites-Lazaro , Carolina Monteiro de Carvalho and Leandro Luiz Giatti School of Public Health, University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY Received 11 March 2019 In the last decade, the debate on the governance of water, energy, Accepted 4 February 2020 and food (WEF) has intensiﬁed, spurring the emergence of the term “nexus governance.” In general, the reduction of trade-oﬀsand con- KEYWORDS struction of synergies between WEF have been placed on the scien- Water-energy-food nexus; tiﬁc, political, and economic agenda. However, although increasingly nexus governance; social used, it is diﬃcult to ﬁnd a clear meaning and deﬁnition of what the network analysis; discourse term represents. Based on a systematic literature review (SLR), using analysis; systematic literature review text-mining and machine learning algorithms, this article investigates what are the conceptual basis of the nexus governance debate, and attempts to clarify the main themes, networks, and gaps within this literature. The analysis is based on quantitative and qualitative meth- ods, combining social network analysis (SNA) and discourse analysis (DA). The results highlighted that twenty-four governance-related concepts support this literature, breaking down into eight groups: water and basin governance; environmental and systems govern- ance; risk and resource security governance; economic governance; global governance; urban governance; integrative and cooperative governance; and “epistemic” and transdisciplinary governance. 1. Introduction In the last decade, many authors have tried to address the governance of water, energy, and food (WEF) holistically. The concept of WEF nexus has allocated this debate. In general, authors agree that the nexus is deﬁned by the integration capacity of diﬀerent sectors from generation to distribution in the search for more viable solutions for the planet. This is amid scenarios of inequalities, scarcity, misdistribution, and misuse of natural resources, and uncertainties associated with global changes (Hoﬀ 2011; Dupar and Oates 2012; Reynolds and Cranston 2014; Allouche et al. 2015;Giatti et al. 2016;Lal 2016). Important events in the last decade fostered the use of the concept, such as the Bonn 2011 Conference, Sixth Edition of Global Risks in 2011, World Water Forum 2012 in Marseilles, Rio+20 in 2012, and Stockholm Water Week in 2014 (Allouche et al. 2015). These conferences addressed integrated solutions in search of global environmental CONTACT Alberto Matenhauer Urbinatti albertourbinatti@usp.br School of Public Health, University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article. © 2020 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. 22 A. M. URBINATTI ET AL. sustainability. The relationships between WEF can be deﬁned as follows. Water is needed to generate energy; energy is needed for the supply of water; energy is needed to produce food; food can be used to produce energy; water is needed to grow food; and food transports (virtual) water, usually using energy (Stringer et al. 2014). Thus, any problem in the management of one resource can directly aﬀect the others (Hussey and Pittock 2012). Since both governance and WEF nexus have diﬀerent meanings in the literature, it is a challenging task to understand them together. Nexus governance seems to appear as an umbrella concept for integrated decision-making and solutions for environmental issues. However, although this association is becoming increasingly common, it is not possible to say that it is an already well-deﬁned concept. A previous non-systematic review on nexus governance was carried out by the Stockholm Environment Institute (Weitz et al. 2017a), which pointed out the main gaps and proposals for the future regarding the governance debate on the WEF nexus. According to the authors, the literature on nexus governance is based on three perspec- tives: risk, economic rationality, and political economy. First, this is an important contribu- tion, as it is the ﬁrst eﬀort to categorize seemingly unrelated studies published in recent years. Another working paper (in the Nexus Network Think Piece Series) by Stein et al. (2014) approaches the discussion on nexus governance by developing a foundation for a strategic action perspective. They recognize that nexus challenges are intrinsically linked to the perceptions, interests, and practices of actors, and construct an approach for the relational understanding of nexus governance. They also emphasize the need to address nexus challenges through existing governance arrangements. Moving forward, in this work we are interested in capturing which are the govern- ance concepts that constitute the literature about WEF nexus governance through a systematic literature review (SLR). It is, therefore, an attempt to understand whether nexus governance can be deﬁned conceptually but also the way this is addressed in the literature. The innovative aspect of this research is to understand the conceptual foundations of nexus governance and identify the diﬀerences found within quantitative and qualitative methods. This includes text-mining tools and machine learning algo- rithms, Social Network Analysis (SNA), and discourse analysis (DA). Three research questions guided this study: What governance concepts constitute nexus literature? What are their main themes and networks within the selected articles? Which are the research gaps in the nexus-governance discussion? The paper is structured as follows: In Section 2 we describe the theoretical background of this research; Section 3 describes materials and methods used in this study; Section 4 presents the results of the study; in Section 5 we discuss the results; Section 6 refers to the research gaps; and ﬁnally in Section 7 we present the ﬁnal remarks. 2. Theoretical background The overlapping of decision-making possibilities is one of the main constraints for nexus governance, which faces the challenge of promoting interaction among pre-existing governance structures (Benson et al. 2015). One idea repeatedly addressed is the need JOURNAL OF INTEGRATIVE ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES 23 to “break down the silos” (Cairns and Krzywoszynska 2016). That is, there is progressive encouragement to expand research and policy decisions beyond specialized knowledge and traditional governance structures based on sectors. The possibility that WEF interac- tions go beyond the siloes can be supported by two concepts: trade-oﬀs and synergies. Trade-oﬀs analysis may reveal priorities in the governance process and inform locally deﬁned norms of fairness in interventions. Institutional synergies can determine progress in ensuring balance and mitigation of possible rebound eﬀects in environmental planning and management (Kurian et al. 2016). Besides, robust synergy can be deﬁned by knowl- edge exchange among and across diﬀerent sectors, enhancement of capacities by key players and the appropriation by agencies and departments of ﬁnancing and technology (Gregory 1997). Ultimately, the two concepts present similarities; “trade-oﬀs” refers to a compromise that involves negotiation, while “synergies” means that inter-connection necessitates collective action (Kurian et al. 2016). Based on this, institutional arrangements and governance structures in the nexus approach can be guided by 1) intersectionality, 2) interactionality and 3) hybridity (Kurian and Kardanian, 2015). These three components are much more uncertain possi- bilities than achieved characteristics. It would be necessary to change the intersection between material ﬂows, ﬁnancing and institutions; the vertical and horizontal interaction between economy, politics and society; and the analysis based on hybridity and trans- disciplinarity (Kurian et al. 2016). To some extent, this approach interacts with many governance concepts, focusing on integrative governance across diverse sectors and actors. Governance has increasingly become a fashionable term, gaining traction from the “Our Global Neighborhood” report in 1995 (Commission on Global Governance 1995). It has also been the subject of multiple disciplines and kinds of literature, all of which give the term governance diﬀerent meanings (Kersbergen and Waarden 2004). At least six diﬀerent uses were selected, namely as the minimal state, corporate governance, new public management, “good governance,” socio-cybernetic system, and self-organizing networks (Rhodes 1996; Pierre and Peters 2000). Despite their use in diverse disciplines, including development studies, economics, political science and international relations, law, planning, geography, business administration, public administration, sociology, and history. However, the concept could precisely connect diﬀerent disciplines and thus stimulate comparisons between quite diﬀerent phenomena (Kersbergen and Waarden 2004). Essentially, governance was portrayed as socio-political and understood to have complex processes and interactions, constituting patterns of law (Bevir 2011; Benites- Lazaro et al. 2018a). “It replaces a focus on the formal institutions of states and govern- ments with recognition of the diverse activities that often blur the boundary of state and society” (Bevir 2011, p. 2). Thus, following the work of Stoker (1998), governance can be understood as a set of institutions and actors beyond the boundaries of government. The term identiﬁes diﬀerent responsibilities for tackling social and economic issues, as well as power dependencies involved between institutions. In addition, governance can represent an autonomous self-governing network of actors, recognizing capacities beyond the con- trol of the government but also seeing the latter as able to use new tools as a guide (Stoker 1998). 24 A. M. URBINATTI ET AL. 3. Materials and methods 3.1. Methods In this study, we ﬁrst performed social network analysis (SNA), a tool that facilitates communication between a group of actors (individuals or organizations) called nodes. Nodes are coupled by some common ground, such as interests, ﬁnancial exchanges, friendships, dislikes, knowledge, prestige, etc. SNA operates on many levels, from family relationships and disease-spreading to the level of corporate strategies, social movements or even nations. This method is a way to re-incorporate context and bridge the gap between the micro and the macro, the cells constituting the animal, the individuals constituting groups, or the actors constituting a political system. This also allows research- ers to retain the traditional units of recording, while simultaneously broadening the perspective by including information about the relationships across these units. This additional structural information allows researchers to address existing research ques- tions using new tools, approaching them from a diﬀerent theoretical perspective (Benites- Lazaro et al. 2018b). Second, discourse analysis (DA), which consists of a set of techniques for the structured research of texts. It is “the study of language-in-use and is employed to engender a range of meanings varying from the analysis of linguistic regularities to the normative quality of discussions” (Benites-Lazaro et al. 2018b, p. 320). Similar to Benites- Lazaro et al. (2018b) in this study, we used a mixed-method for the DA, in order to take advantage of both qualitative and quantitative techniques. It assumes that, both, the number of word repetitions performed by software and the exploratory lexical patterns, play important roles in textual analysis. The analyses were deemed necessary to cope with the in-depth examination of twenty-eight articles. The aim was to ﬁnd community and a relationship among themes, surrounding nexus governance and discovery patterns, and extract elementary contexts. Through this, a qualitative analysis could be conducted to identify the context of predominant discourses on nexus governance. 3.2. Materials The data collected are articles from the database of Scopus, Web of Science and Science Direct over the period 2007–2018 with the keyword “water-energy-food nexus” and “water-energy-food nexus AND governance.” The results of the collection were 1455 articles (N = 1455). The SLR was performed in two steps. First, we cleaned the duplicate articles. After this, we applied to this big data the open-source software Gephi for visual exploration of networks and compute centrality measures. This is a network analytic tool that is used to represent the nodes (themes) and edges (relationships) in a network to analyse the network data (Benites-Lazaro et al. 2018c). Second, the searches were dee- pened using T-Lab software, performing text-mining and machine learning to select only articles in English that focus on “water-energy-food nexus AND governance” in titles, abstracts and keywords in the same period (2007–2018). We did not consider papers that dealt with only one or two elements of the nexus, such as only “water” or “water-energy”: the three elements would need to appear together. Moreover, books, book chapters, working papers, conference papers, and reports were excluded. The N is twenty-eight papers. JOURNAL OF INTEGRATIVE ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES 25 3.3. Data analysis Quantitative and qualitative analysis were performed using the T-Lab software. This pro- gram uses a set of statistical, linguistic, and graphic tools to analyse texts (Lancia 2012). In general, the steps of this software are the processing of documents creating a database, its transformation creating a target data, text mining discovering patterns and, ﬁnally, the interpretation that creates knowledge. One advantage is that it facilitates mixing qualitative and quantitative methods, performing a quantitative treatment of textual data, and enabling a qualitative analysis of the results to understand the discourse (Benites-Lazaro et al. 2018a). The adjacency matrix of the network (a matrix where each element [i, j] is equal to the weight of the arc from Node i to Node j was performed, using T-Lab software. This included: i) an ego network analysis (ENA), using T-Lab software; ii) discourse analysis (DA), also using T-Lab software; and iii) social network analysis (SNA), using the open-source software SocNetV (Social Network Visualizer) for visual exploration of the networks. ENA enables a description of the relationship and role of the “ego” in its social network. The network is composed of one user centring the graph (the ego), all users linked to this ego (called “alters”), and all relations between the alters (Benites-Lazaro and Andrade 2019). One objective of using this method was to identify the most important themes linked to governance, in the context of the WEF nexus. Hence, a network measure enabled comparing of the centralities of the ego “governance,” in our sample. The result is a mini- network, or immediate neighbourhood surrounding an ego that can, perhaps, reveal something important about the theme or social world from the ego’s perspective (Benites-Lazaro and Andrade 2019). The diﬀerent metrics of the SocNetV are: a) Degree Centrality (DC), which quantiﬁes how many ties a node has compared to other nodes in the network, indicating a measure of actor activity; b) Closeness Centrality (CC), which focuses on how close each node is to all other nodes in the network, that is, nodes with high CC are those who can reach many other nodes in a few steps; and c) Betweenness Centrality (BC) shows that each actor can be interpreted as a measure of potential control as it quantiﬁes just how much that actor acts as an intermediary to others. An actor which lies between many others is assumed to have a higher likelihood of being able to control information ﬂow in the network (Kalamaras 2019). 4. Results 4.1. Social network analysis (SNA) Figure 1 shows the SNA applied in the 1455 articles (N ) to identify the term “governance” within the research in the theme WEF nexus. “Governance” appear with 7 value of frequency. This value is not representative if compared with the topic “water-energy” that has 54 of frequency or topic such as “food security” with 18, and “climate change” with 16 of frequency. The frequency represents the count of the number of times the keyword appears by using the TF-IDF measure. This measure allows us to evaluate the weight of a term (lexical unit) within a document (context unit). Table 1 shows the values for Figure 1. Figure 2 shows the ego network analysis (ENA) for the word “governance” applied to the N highlighting topics with a high probability of predecessor connection such as f, “water” (0.08 or 8%) follow by the topic “nexus” with probability 5% of links, and topic 26 A. M. URBINATTI ET AL. Figure 1. The network of subjects on water-energy-food nexus-related research. Source: The authors. Table 1. Values referring to Figure 1. Keywords Freq Keywords Freq Keywords Freq water_energy 54 sustainable_development 11 climate_change_adaptation 6 water_energy_food 46 virtual_water 10 integrated_water_resources_management 6 water 36 policy 10 water_scarcity 6 energy 32 wastewater_treatment 9 bioenergy 6 sustainability 22 hydropower 9 trade_oﬀs6 water_footprint 19 ecosystem_services 9 wef 6 food_security 18 energy_eﬃciency 9 water_resources_management 6 food 17 irrigation 8 environment 5 climate_change 16 water_supply 8 biomass 5 water_resources 13 water_management 8 integrated_assessment 5 renewable_energy 12 governance 7 sustainable_development_goals 5 desalination 11 energy_security 7 biofuel 5 life_cycle_assessment 11 drought 7 uncertainty 5 water_security 11 resilience 6 water_use 5 “environmental” and “urban” with (4%) and (3%) of probability respectively. Topics as successors of governance or those words that appear after the word governance are “system” (4%), “structure” (3%), and “process” (3%). Also, it was possible to identify some of the concepts that most relate to the word governance. They are: “water”, “nexus”, JOURNAL OF INTEGRATIVE ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES 27 Figure 2. Ego network for the word “governance”. Source: The authors Table 2. Values referring to Figure 2. Prob “Governance” predecessor “Governance” successor Prob 0.08 water system 0.04 0.05 neuxs structure 0.03 0.04 environmental process 0.03 0.03 urban water 0.02 0.02 good analysis 0.02 0.02 security approach 0.02 0.02 multi-level gap 0.02 0.02 global nexus 0.02 0.02 reﬂexive research 0.02 0.01 level arrangement 0.02 0.01 exist strategy 0.01 0.01 management challenge 0.01 0.01 policycentric mechanism 0.01 0.01 resource management 0.01 0.01 sustainability policy 0.01 0.01 diﬀerent complex 0.01 0.01 integrate understanting 0.01 0.01 policy wef-nexus 0.01 0.01 system global 0.01 0.01 adaptation policy 0.01 “environmental”, “good”, “global”, “urban”, “polycentric”, “multi-level”, “reﬂexive”, and “security”. This analysis focuses only on the closest connections. Table 2 shows the values for Figure 2. While Figure 2 focuses on the network from a single word, Figure 3 shows more diverse groups of words. Figure 3 shows the network analysis employing centrality and connec- tions between themes in the N . The three metrics (DC, CC and BC) indicate thirty-eight f 28 A. M. URBINATTI ET AL. Figure 3. Degree Centrality, Closeness Centrality and Betweenness Centrality applied to N f. Source: The authors. “actors” with some degree of centrality. The words “water” and “nexus” are prominent, i.e., those with the highest degree of connection. The word with the highest DC value is “energy,” indicating a large number of arches from it; the word with the highest CC value is “nexus;” and the word with the highest BC value is “water,” evidencing that it is the main intermediary among the other actors. From DC and CC it is possible to notice, besides those more frequent words like “nexus,”“water,”“energy,”“food,”“approach” and “gov- ernance,” the most prominent words are “policy integration” and “sustainable develop- ment.” In addition, the centrality of the words “climate change” and “economic” in DC, and “environmental,”“security” and “management” in CC are highlighted in the table below. Table 3 shows the values for Figure 3. 4.2. Systematization and discourse analysis (DA) of the literature The systematization was performed following the qualitative research from the elemen- tary contexts provided by the T-Lab software, which allows identifying the context of predominant discourses on nexus governance and the categorization of diﬀerent con- cepts that constitute the literature on nexus governance from the diﬀerent scientiﬁc research. Table 4 summarizes the concepts used by the authors, the main focus of the articles, and correlation with nexus governance. This also helps to clarify the relationships resulting not only from DA but also from SNA. 5. Discussion The mixed-methods used in this paper provided diverse possibilities to reﬂect on the associations found. SLR is an important tool when there is uncertainty about the evidence on a topic, with the main objective of clarifying some issue in a detailed and organized way (Petticrew and Roberts 2006). The SNA can provide analyses and visualizations of multiple relational measures, such as centrality, to support research hypotheses. In the case of WEF nexus, the SNA has the potential to make visible complex interactions, for example, between ﬁnancing, technology and leadership in conditions of scale and limits previously deﬁned, showing if the character of the decisions about water, energy and JOURNAL OF INTEGRATIVE ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES 29 Table 3. Values referring to Figure 3. Node Label DC CC BC 1 country 1.136130 5.144472 0.000000 2 resource 5.053780 10.038323 0.000000 3 world 1.423530 5.892662 0.000000 4 challenge 1.529410 6.136923 0.000000 5 process 1.574790 10.585003 0.000000 6 system 2.361340 7.636276 0.000000 7 government 1.000000 8.007078 0.000000 8 production 1.937820 6.953677 0.000000 9 climate 4.057150 6.623620 0.000000 10 security 3.813450 9.211764 0.000000 11 global 2.436970 7.744224 0.000000 12 change 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000 13 food 8.910920 11.399594 0.000000 14 issue 2.119330 12.364489 0.000000 15 economic 3.225210 5.970632 0.000000 16 management 3.541180 8.980117 0.000000 17 state 1.090760 5.013329 0.000000 18 problem 1.151260 8.776500 0.000000 19 sustainability 1.226890 9.134206 0.000000 20 policy 6.174790 13.129889 0.000000 21 governance 4.115970 16.180571 0.000000 22 energy 10.000000 11.624536 0.000000 23 sector 2.527730 7.868926 0.000000 24 development 7.475630 13.542240 0.000000 25 decision 1.393280 9.865136 0.000000 26 integration 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000 27 institutional 1.151260 5.187346 0.000000 28 environmental 1.695800 11.025700 0.000000 29 approach 5.189920 17.357212 0.000000 30 social 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000 31 focus 1.287390 5.554934 0.000000 32 level 1.831930 5.013021 0.000000 33 water 8.610090 13.862694 68.000000 34 nexus 2.680670 24.063813 58.000000 35 sustainable 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000 36 political 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000 37 analysis 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000 38 include 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000 Note: DC range: 0 ≤ DC ≤∞ (node energy); BC range: 0 ≤ BC ≤ 1260 (node water); CC range: 0 ≤ CC ≤ 0.0277778 (node nexus). food are coordinated or siloed (Kurian et al. 2018). In this paper, the SNA was used not for physical actors, but for protagonist words within the text corpus of the twenty-eight selected articles. DA is an important complement to understanding interactions, seeking to identify the relationship between linguistic regularities such as meanings, purpose and negotiations through discourse (Suciu 2019). The ﬁrst network analysis (Figure 1) showed that “governance” is not central in all articles collected primarily. This result illustrates that the concept of governance within WEF nexus research is underdeveloped. Figure 1 shows the predominance in researches of two sectors “water-energy” or “energy-water” and “water-food.” Due to the water- centred nature and trend in many studies, some researchers have criticized that the current analyses of the link are insuﬃciently intersectoral, or even a new challenge to be consolidated towards integration (Benson et al. 2015). The focus on water alone undermines the original intention of developing an explicit intersectoral perspective and response options to replace the traditional sectors (Smajgl et al. 2016). In addition, 30 A. M. URBINATTI ET AL. Table 4. Concepts, focus and correlation with nexus governance. CONCEPT AUTHORS FOCUS CORRELATION WITH NEXUS GOVERNANCE WATER GOVERNANCE Gupta et al. 2013 Literature review on the state-of-the-art of water governance It does not go deeper into the concept; it only recognizes that (WG) science single-sector water governance is not suﬃcient to regulate land, agriculture, and other issues. It needs to be a cross- sector process. TRANSBOUNDARY BASIN Al-Said and Hefny, 2018 Analysis of regional cooperation in the Eastern Nile Basin The WEF Nexus approach can be useful for highlighting key GOVERNANCE (TBG) neglected issues on interlinked resources, at the basin and regional levels. INTEGRATED WATER Hagemann and Kirschke 2017 How to strengthen nexus governance analysis from IWRM The importance of existing and useful governance strategies as RESOURCE Benson et al. 2015 experiences conditions for governance transitions. Governance analysis MANAGEMENT (IWRM) Relation between IWRM and nexus should refer to diﬀerent types of problems, contexts, and inter- and transdisciplinary research. Both IWRM and nexus provide guidance on optical governance. Nexus aim at policy coherence and multi-level interaction, but the concept provides few normative principles on how governance should occur. SOCIO-ECOLOGICAL Giampietro 2018 Perception and representation of the nexus at the interface The concept of SES lends itself, particularly well, to the purpose SYSTEM (SES) Al-Said & Elagib, 2017 between society and the natural environment of the abandonment of the current technocratic and top- Villamayor-Tomas et al. 2015 Literature review on WEF nexus down approach. Value-chain and institutional analysis of four irrigation-related Nexus governance is the missing link in the nexus debate. It cases studies holds the promise of needed innovations and reconstructing policy and institutions to tackle issues of resource use and security. The conceptual bridge between value chains and institutional analysis would seem well-suited to the challenge of understanding nexus research, given the importance of resource ﬂows and governance dynamics in these coupled systems. ECOSYSTEM SERVICES (ES) Pahl-Wostl et al., 2017 Analytical framework, using a network and ecosystem services The concept of Ecosystem Services (ES) may help to (a) to identify coordination failures and persistent sustainability operationalize the WEF nexus in terms of trade-oﬀs and problems, as well as leverage points for transformative synergies, (b) develop a common language to negotiate change risks, framed according to diﬀerent logics in diﬀerent security concepts (c) support the integration of fragmented institutional settings, and (d) encourage negotiation and cooperation among ES users. Thus, if combined with appropriate multi-level governance settings, the ES concept may become instrumental in supporting transformative change, overcoming sustainability deﬁcits in the WEF nexus. (Continued) JOURNAL OF INTEGRATIVE ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES 31 Table 4. (Continued). CONCEPT AUTHORS FOCUS CORRELATION WITH NEXUS GOVERNANCE INTEGRATIVE Weitz et al., 2017b Literature review on the IEG literature The IEG literature oﬀers analytical insights that could help close ENVIRONMENTAL Visseren-Hamakers 2015 gaps in the nexus literature, in relation to the conditions for GOVERNANCE (IEG) cross-sector coordination and collaboration, dynamics beyond cross-sector interactions, and political and cognitive factors, such as determinants of change. Since 2010, the IEG literature has turned to the WEF nexus debate. These studies have focused on governance systems, at all levels, prioritizing policies and sectors. ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE Middleton et al. 2015 Mapping of the rise of the WEF nexus as a research, policy, and Introducing the concept of EJ into the nexus, especially where (EJ) project agenda, in mainland Southeast Asia. narratives, trade-oﬀs, and outcomes are contested, could make better use of how the nexus is framed, understood, and acted upon. GLOBAL GOVERNANCE Boas et al. 2016 It contributes to the institutionalization of a “nexus approach,” Proposition for the new High-level Political Forum and Global (GG) in the global institutional setting of the Sustainable Sustainable Development Report to adopt a nexus Development Goals. perspective. It also emphasizes the importance of designing partnerships that are focused on cross-national nexuses in sustainable development. GLOBAL FINANCIAL Schimdt & Matthews, 2018 The role of global ﬁnancial networks in articulating the nexus The shift from ‘state to system’ of the nexus structures draws NETWORKS (GFN) and connecting it to sustainability programmes on the repertoire of ﬁnancial techniques that delineate facts of the world descriptions of complex, adaptive systems – and makes accounts of the integrated dynamics linking economies, environments, and societies. WORLD GOVERNANCE Zisopoulo et al., 2018 It establishes the existence of the WEF Nexus approach, in Rethink the role of an actor with a new quantitative Economic (WG) a more concrete way, and includes proposals for holistic and Platform working in a new knowledge-based management increased internal structure and for a set of rules, recasting system, by employing trade-oﬀs, synergies, acts of inﬂuence, the current role into that of an actor with a Computable intermediation and governance which are suitable to the General Equilibrium platform. new state of world governance and its main players. GOVERNANCE OF GLOBAL Amorim et al. 2018 Understanding how the global risks impact the nexus between Risk management can contribute to more eﬀective RISKS (GGR) water, energy, and food through a systemic analysis governance. It also emphasizes the failure of national and regional, or global governance, as geopolitical risk to water, energy, and food. INNOVATIVE GOVERNANCE Gallagher et al. 2016 The policy and research agenda on the WEF nexus needs to The article proposes three points for sustainable development: OF SHARED RISKS (IGSR) consider dimensions of shared risks externalities and shared risks across multiple scales; innovative government mechanisms for shared risks; and negotiating the balance between silos, politics, and power in addressing shared risks. (Continued) 32 A. M. URBINATTI ET AL. Table 4. (Continued). CONCEPT AUTHORS FOCUS CORRELATION WITH NEXUS GOVERNANCE GOVERNANCE OF NEXUS Beck and Walker 2013 Insights from cross-system mapping to assess the role of city High quality governance entails granting access to the debate, SECURITY governance in achieving nexus security (or not) and the role for instance, how to manage the man-environment (GNS) of technological innovations in serving the same purpose relationship – by each of the three actively engaged parties: individualists (I), hierarchists (H), or egalitarians (E). Each of the three will have a voice in the debate. URBAN GOVERNANCE (UG) Artioli et al. 2017 ‘Urbanize’ the nexus agenda and consider the implications of It is important to take the nexus out of the global resources policy integration for urban governance management debate and resituate it in broader political debates about government transformations in urban measures. Additionally, recognize the nexus as more of a driver policy change than a threat. COOPERATIVE Sperling & Raswami, 2017 Review of city case studies to inform a framework, for The application of Ostrom’s CG principles to city carbon and GOVERNANCE developing urban infrastructure design standards and policy water budgets. Encouraging systems approaches at the (CG) instruments, in order to achieve energy eﬃciency and nexus sectors may improve the management of successful greenhouse gas mitigation through city carbon budgets and “budget-based” approaches across sectors. It also suggests water use eﬃciency improvements in governance process to carbon and water budgets, such as the development of appropriate incentive, enforcement, and ﬂexible mechanisms, among others. GOOD GOVERNANCE Lele et al. 2013 It uses examples from recent global developments (and from Contextualized solutions to challenges of WEF nexus security (GG) China and India) to place empirical analysis of governance should be considered. Beyond that, develop an issues at the top of global agenda understanding of the roles, and linkages, between policies and institutions at various political and administrative levels. It requires the involvement of all stakeholders, and their collective impacts, on the short- and long-run outcomes. POLICY INTEGRATION Gain et al. 2015 Review of the emerging literature on the water-energy-food PI is essential for implementing the WEF nexus approach. In (PI) (WEF) nexus and, then, analyzes the nexus in the context of this way, inter-ministerial collaboration is required among Bangladesh the Ministry of Water Resources, Ministry of Power, Energy and Mineral Resources, Ministry of Food, Ministry of Environment and Forest, and other relevant ministries and government bodies. Also, collaborative problem-solving processes are required through participation of the diﬀerent level stakeholders. INTER-GOVERNANCE Mohtar 2016 It examines the governance of the nexus, understanding The implementation of the nexus requires an “inter- (IG) capacity building and models or tools available to support governance” unit that operates to bridge the gaps between decision makers. diﬀerent ministries, while understanding and implementing the cross-cutting and integrative nature of the nexus. (Continued) JOURNAL OF INTEGRATIVE ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES 33 Table 4. (Continued). CONCEPT AUTHORS FOCUS CORRELATION WITH NEXUS GOVERNANCE ORGANIZATIONAL Harwood 2018 It presents an approach that addresses the complexity that The approach of the Viable System Model presents a powerful GOVERNANCE (OG) characterizes the WEF nexus in the context of the Mekong means to address the complexity of the WEF nexus and, as River Basin. such, should be used in an appropriate “mess” to demonstrate the reality of its potential. Organizational governance issues are eﬀectively modelled using the VSM, revealing the multi-level perspective and drawing attention to the relevant governance mechanisms. GOVERNANCE OF SOCIO- Daher et al. 2018 It presents a framework for resource and stakeholder The STEP framework oﬀers guidance through the diﬀerent TECHNO-ECONOMIC- interactions and trade-oﬀs, addressing governance and elements that need to be accounted for while assessing and POLITICAL (STEP) NEXUS ﬁnancing schemes for carrying forward the implementation promoting a nexus solution. Proposing feasible, SOLUTION of those scenarios implementable, sustainable solutions requires truly inclusive transdisciplinary conceptualization, quantiﬁcation, and assessment of current and projected resource hotspots. KNOWLEDGE CO- Howarth and Monasterolo Decision-making in response to shocks to the WEF nexus and Transdisciplinary approaches to knowledge production, such as PRODUCTION (KCP) 2016 barriers to the application of a transdisciplinary approach participatory workshops, helps overcome gaps in the research-policy interface. Also, it is important to understand characteristics of the nexus to build resilience to shocks, thus, tackling risk. REFLEXIVE GOVERNANCE Halbe et al. 2015 Methodological framework to analyse sustainability The reﬂexive governance approach can induce a sustainability (RG) innovations in the water-energy-food nexus and strategies transition, and learning processes have to take place, for governing transition processes in Cyprus simultaneously, at diﬀerent levels. Participatory model- building, using the causal loops diagram (CLD), turned out to be a suitable method to systematically analyse stakeholder perceptions on issues in the WEF nexus. GOVERNANCE HEURISTIC Müller et al. 2015 This review article argues for systematic nexus thinking, based The nexus thinking and landscape lens, in combination with (GH) on the intrinsically linked systems of soil, water, and virtual resource cycles, oﬀers an opportunity to address biodiversity. trade-oﬀs and utilize existing synergies to develop pathways towards integrated resource governance. It may serve as a GH to implement the post-2015 Development Agenda in a variety of national contexts. Hence, nexus thinking may serve as a GH for nation states to understand and, subsequently, operationalize the implementation of the post-2015 Development Agenda. TRANSDISCIPLINARY Kurian 2017 It focuses on implications of the nexus approach for public An institutional framework that accounts for the role of the APPROACHES (TA) policy formulation, implementation, and monitoring, and government in shaping individual behaviour, with regard to emphasizing the importance of transdisciplinary management and use of environmental resources, needs to approaches. be delineated. It highlights the need to look at ecosystem and public services. Transdisciplinary approaches have the potential to better shape the translation of scientiﬁc results to respond to global challenges. Source: The authors based on literature review. 34 A. M. URBINATTI ET AL. isolated sector investments risk prioritizing the goals of one speciﬁc sector over others. Integrated analytical approaches that understand the complexity of WEF nexus can identify intersectoral trade-oﬀs and internalize driving forces that might otherwise be overlooked in dual-sector approaches (Miralles-Wilhelm 2016). From both Figure 2 and the DA, it was also possible to identify the “water centrism” as the literature on the nexus suggests (Allan et al. 2013; Schimdt and Matthews, 2018). Even though the concept of water governance is not the main concept in most articles, the vast majority recognize this centrality. Those using more focused concepts are Gupta et al. (2013) (water governance), Al-Said & Hefny, (2018) (Transboundary Basin Governance – TBG) and Hagemann and Kirschke (2017)and Benson et al.(2015) (Integrated Water Resources Management – IWRM). According to Gupta et al. (2013), the global water crisis cannot be solved through technocratic and depoliticized management or engineering processes; it needs a radical political challenge, from a global to the local level (glocal). Since TBG has historically been focused on state and water-related issues, the nexus approach extends the scope to important sectors such as agriculture and energy (Al-Saidi and Hefny 2018). This crucial connection between governance and water is precisely related to a legacy of the Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) approach. This concept encom- passes many principles with a holistic and systemic view, and while it seems closely related to the nexus concept, it diﬀers in certain aspects (Benson et al. 2015). Two points bridge this relation. First, IWRM was an attempt to create governance reform and integrate water with other policy objectives (Pahl-Wostl et al. 2011; Pahl-Wostl 2017). Second, IWRM researchers and practitioners have generated important lessons that can help analyse and implement nexus governance (Hagemann and Kirschke 2017). Regarding the diﬀerences, the one that interests us most is related to governance approaches. Benson et al. (2012), (2015)) show that nexus conceptualizations provide few normative principles on how governance should occur, while IWRM is often based on “good governance” principles, fostering transparency, and collaborative decision-making. The World Bank introduced “good governance” in the 1990 s as part of a controversial neoliberal agenda concerning the public sector, but it also brought important incentives to the ideas of representative and responsible government and absence of corruption (Bevir 2013). However, this term may represent other diﬀerent ideas, such as an objective solution of policy problems through decision-making, political dimensions of the exten- sion to which decision-making processes are open and democratic, political assessment of the success of decisions, among others (Bevir 2011). Although more frequent in IWRM, the discussion on good governance has also recurred in selected papers. In the work of Lele et al. (2013), good governance assumes the merits concerning the enhancement of a personal and collective security sense within a community and its representativeness. Gupta et al. (2013) reinforce that even the fact that good governance has the potential to achieve multi-level coherence, there is ten- sions and trade-oﬀs between eﬀectiveness, participation and legitimacy. Pahl-Wostl et al., (2017) show the importance of engagement in supporting the design and the implemen- tation of polycentric arrangements and the possibility of enabling good governance principles such as multi-level and coordinated systems of governance. Also from Figure 2, the word “system” appeared as strictly related to “governance.” It is not new to think that the nexus is an interconnected system between WEF. However, it can be deduced that if there is a unit in this literature, it can be tangible from the idea of a JOURNAL OF INTEGRATIVE ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES 35 “system.” It is also not novel to think about the world in a systemic and integrated way, even considering socio-political dimensions. For example, the Harappan civilization, which existed from 3300 to 1300 BC in the Indus Valley, proposed an “Ecological Consciousness.” Other examples include “The discourse of the culture of nature” by the Assyrian king Assurbanipal in Mesopotamia (2700 BC) and “The Rig Veda” holistic approach by peoples from north-west India from 1500 to 1000 BC (Lal 2016). In the last century, we ﬁnd exponents such as the controversial General Systems Theory by Ludwig von Bertalanﬀy, who sought to approach holistically from a biological perspective alternatives to the methodological reductionism imposed by the Industrial Revolution (Hammond 2003). In contemporary times, an example is a great eﬀort made through Earth System Governance and the Sustainable Development Goals to face climate change in an integrated way. Perhaps the great contribution of the WEF nexus is to bring to the debate diﬀerent sectors of society, which are often on opposite sides of the debate, in an attempt to incorporate systems thinking into the policy-making process (Bazilian et al. 2011). What is important here is that the idea of “systems thinking” deﬁnes some fundamental concepts in the nexus analyses. For instance, “water-energy-food system,”“resource system,” “ecosystem service,”“socio-ecological system,”“management system,”“urban infrastructure system” and “viable system models.” According to Pahl-Wostl (2017), nexus governance encompasses a broad understanding of governance in terms of political, social, economic, and administrative systems that determine the use of WEF and related service delivery. Harwood (2018) argued that a systems approach faces many challenges such as asking what should be recognized within the system in terms of its boundaries. It is, therefore, necessary to rethink conceptual boundaries to better ﬁt this integration as a natural system to improve the decision-making process (Weitz et al. 2017b). The WEF nexus approach requires new models of analysis based on complex systems thinking (Giampietro 2018)aswellas facilitates the shift of techniques from state to system (Schmidt and Matthews 2018). This shift takes place, for example, in the repertoire of ﬁnancial techniques that consider the integrated dynamics linking economies, environments, and societies. Figure 3 shows that in addition to the prominence of “water” and “nexus,” it is possible to identify the centrality of the terms “policy integration” and “sustainable development.” Environmental policy integration has been a widely debated concept since the publica- tion of the Brundtland report, in 1987 (Boas et al. 2016; Weitz et al. 2017b). According to Gain et al. (2015), policy integration is essential for implementing the WEF nexus approach. This has been addressed in this literature mainly from the need to expand the levels of governance towards sustainable development. The term “multi-level” becomes important in this context, as shown in Figure 2. Harwood et al. (2018) clarify that governance should be viewed as multi-tiered, nested, and at multiple levels. In other words, cross-scale governance arrangements should be tied to nexus systems integration (Sperling and Raswami, 2017). In contrast, as Artioli et al. (2017) said, policy integration should not be considered to be inherently beneﬁcial; it needs to consider the power relations that shape policy change. That is, it is crucial to understand the negotiation process of possible policy integrations, considering whether, and how, cross-sectoral policies can contribute to universal, equitable, and sustainable access to resources. Sustainable development is one of the debates present in the WEF nexus approach because the concept is closely related with the ecological modernization debate (Wiegleb and Bruns 2018). Nevertheless, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are 36 A. M. URBINATTI ET AL. important bases for the nexus debate (Boas et al. 2016; Pahl-Wostl 2017; Amorim et al. 2018; Schmidt and Matthews 2018; Daher et al. 2018). The nexus literature often relates climate change as an element of the nexus as important as water, energy and food (Benson et al. 2015). Global climate change trends and competitive land-use patterns have dispelled the systemic ability to compensate for increased demand in an integrated manner that is both reliable and orderly (Zisopoulou et al. 2018). It can be said that the dimension of security and risk is closely associated with climate change (Amorim et al. 2018). Gallagher et al. (2016) remarked that risks could be better addressed if policy-makers increased the use of ﬂexible governance mechanisms at multiple scales through the decentra- lization of authority. In this case, polycentric governance, which gained impetus in the 1960 s, and integrative environmental governance can be appropriate concepts to provide it (Visseren-Hamakers 2015). Weitz et al. (2017b) argued that nexus governance is to some extent a question of environmental governance. Figure 3 also illustrates the importance of socio-economic perspectives. As Zisopoulo et al. (2018) indicate, socio-economic factors are associated with the structure of the particular economy and actors proﬁle which leads to policy deter- mination. Weitz et al. (2017b) argued that in nexus governance, a technical and administrative matter prevails, which often focuses on optimizing system perfor- mance. This is why the WEF nexus is commonly understood from a ﬁnancial per- spective. In general, ﬁnancialization describes patterns of accumulation that accrue proﬁt. However, Schimidt and Matthews (2018) believe that it is not a defence of capitalism, but a harbinger of how this shift from “state to system” draws based on ﬁnancial techniques that delineate facts of the world. The possibilities of implement- ing the nexus are directly associated with saving resources, in other words, ﬁnancial savings (Mohtar 2016). This is a relevant feature of the WEF nexus because it brings to the debate important economic actors in the global scenario such as the World Bank and World Economic Forum. Notwithstanding, most authors understand that economic development should be associated with social development, especially of marginalized groups with restricted access to resources (Middleton et al. 2015). “Solutions for such complex, interconnected, and uncertain problems cannot be only technical; they cannot account only for physical resource constraints, or oﬀer only socio-economic, technological, political, or ﬁnancial interventions.” (Daher et al. 2018,p.08). Based on the diﬀerent methods, it is concluded that eight themes are central to this literature: i) water centrism; ii) systems; iii) policy integration; iv) sustainable development v) environmental governance; vi) social-economics and management; vii) resource secur- ity; and viii) climate change. Finally, as shown in Table 4, twenty-four concepts correlated with nexus governance were identiﬁed in the papers analysed. They use diﬀerent approaches to look at the same issue, which is the governance of water, energy and food together. In another synthesis eﬀort, it can be said that the concepts related to governance are grouped into: water and basin governance; environmental and systems governance; risk and resource security governance; economic governance; global govern- ance; urban governance; integrative and cooperative governance; and “epistemic” and transdisciplinary governance. Figure 4 illustrates these groups. JOURNAL OF INTEGRATIVE ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES 37 Figure 4. Thematic groups of concepts related to nexus governance. Source: The authors. 6. Research gaps in this literature Three gaps were noted in this review. The ﬁrst of these is the lack of theoretical approaches that deﬁne the concept of nexus governance more densely. According to Figure 1, few of the 1455 papers initially found develop the governance theme within the nexus literature. Most of those who develop merely recommended the necessity of nexus governance, and did not clarify how this should be implemented. In other words, governance has often appeared as a “recommendation”. Only twenty-eight articles focused more closely on the topic. The most common strategy was to associate more established concepts of governance theory with the nexus debate. Nevertheless, twenty- four concepts were found as central. On the one hand, this represents how nexus studies have diversiﬁed over recent years. This is convenient, as nexus-related methods may acknowledge ambiguities, complexities, uncertainties, and ignorance to alleviate pressure on appraisal (Stirling 2015). On the other, it is an opportunity for future theoretical studies on nexus governance to strengthen the concept. The second gap is related to participatory approaches and methods. Al-Said and Elagib (2017) point out the unclear dimension in the nexus literature regarding the participatory measures needed to achieve policy integration. Gain et al. (2015) propose that ministries should formulate policies in dialogue with stakeholders, experts, professionals, non- governmental organizations (NGOs), and the private sector through participatory approaches. Howarth and Monasterolo (2016) applied a participatory and bottom-up interdisciplinary approach, collecting and analysing data from workshops in the UK with stakeholders in the ﬁeld of business and ﬁnance, knowledge production, and policy- 38 A. M. URBINATTI ET AL. making, identifying barriers to the nexus. Halbe et al. (2015) indicate participatory model building using Causal Loop Diagrams (CLDs) as a suitable method for analysing stake- holder perceptions on issues in the WEF nexus and related sustainability innovations. In this way, participatory approaches are promoted as a means to address integrated management problems and support the development of a systemic understanding among sectors and actors to search for innovative ways to cooperate and collaborate. The above examples show that these methods are being applied by some authors, however, in general, the science produced towards the WEF nexus is still little open to diﬀerent knowledge, such as traditional knowledge. The third gap follows this argument; it is the lack of critical approaches to the nexus debate itself. Similarly to Williams et al. (2019, p. 663), who questioned “[. . .] what is the political performativity of nexus thinking?,” pointing out that there is little visibility for nexus politics and therefore a need for a more progressive concept of integration. In this review, it can be noted that some authors mention the power relations that exist in governance processes, but few of them discuss beyond the institutions and political actors, showing the very power of science being produced in this direction. Hagemann and Kirschke (2017) believe that to address nexus issues in governance, it is necessary to improve inter and transdisciplinary collaboration. Otherwise, one can note barriers due to the lack of involvement of the relevant social science disciplines such as political science, economics, and law in governance analyses. In addition, according to the authors, researchers do not use the results from diﬀerent disciplines in their work. Transdisciplinary approaches are necessary to implement nexus governance since it encompasses decision-making through horizontal relations, that is, bottom-up approaches, rather than vertical top-down ones (Stirling 2015; Kurian and Ardakanian 2015; Howarth and Monasterolo 2016; Artioli, 2017). 7. Final remarks The innovative character of this research is to approach the governance of the nexus from diﬀerent and complementary methodologies – SLR, SNA, and DA. In agreement with Stirling (2015), there are no ideal methods for nexus-related challenges, but a requirement for methodological pluralism. This choice helped in addressing the initial questions, as it brought to the nexus governance debate a more in-depth look at articles related to this topic. Based on the ﬁrst question (what governance concepts constitute nexus literature?), we have found twenty-four diﬀerent concepts related to governance, elucidating a diversity of approaches. They were placed in Table 4 from approximations taken from the qualitative methodology. These concepts were mobilized to add to the governance of the nexus and to provide a base for reconsideration, in the future. The main themes of this literature can be categorized into eight groups: i) water centrism; ii) systems; iii) policy integration; iv) sustainable development v) environmental governance; vi) social- economics and management; vii) resource security; and viii) climate change. Similarly, as shown in Figure 4, the related concepts were also grouped into eight: water and basin governance; environmental and systems governance; risk and resource security govern- ance; economic governance; global governance; urban governance; integrative and cooperative governance; and “epistemic” and transdisciplinary governance. And we also found three gaps in this literature: 1) a lack of theoretical approaches that deﬁne the JOURNAL OF INTEGRATIVE ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES 39 concept of nexus governance more densely, 2) the necessity to enhance focus on participatory approaches, and 3) a lack of critical analysis of the WEF nexus perspective. This paper ends with tree ﬁnal suggestions. First, it must be assumed that the concept of nexus governance cannot be universally applicable. This means that each context of analysis will have its own governance arrangements for water, energy and food. Second, it is necessary to recognize the diverse conceptual basis on which the concept has been approached. Exactly for this reason, it is a very open concept, based on diﬀerent points of view and friendly to transdisciplinary approaches. Third, in our opinion, the WEF nexus approach is important in mitigating inequities, and thus, nexus governance must have strong inclusive characteristics to advocate the participation of several stakeholders including the most disadvantaged in the nexus. Here, participatory approaches can enhance the trans-disciplinary perspective for the nexus, and research or evaluation should incorporate those often left outside formal processes of policy research (Stirling 2015). Sometimes, more participation means more complexity; however, this complexity seems necessary in facing contemporary environmental problems. Some questions may be asked for future studies: Under what circumstances can we have more inclusive governance processes? What are the possibilities for marginalized actors in decision- making processes to decide which integrations matter? How can these actors become not only consumers but also agents of change? Understanding the diversity of approaches and methods analysed here can be an important lesson not only for the nexus debate but also for governance processes. Notwithstanding, given that the literature on nexus governance is focused on the issue of water, it is important to consider the need for more horizontal analysis on resources. This horizontality may also be important in understanding that no scale is more important than the other. The trans-scalar nature of the nexus is an essential characteristic in under- standing that no scale becomes suﬃcient, putting diﬀerent angles in perspective, and viable interactions will always be the object of political decisions. Particularly in relation to the concept of nexus governance, it should be noted that the debate has reshaped other concepts related to governance within the debate on water, energy and food. But there is still a long way to go to make this concept more robust. There is a need for articles that theoretically contribute to the concept of nexus governance in a more critical way. These may be alternatives to ensure that the concept does not remain restricted to scientiﬁc debate, but inﬂuences decision-making processes around the planet. Acknowledgments Special thanks to the São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP), the University of São Paulo through the School of Public Health, the University of Sussex (through Science Policy Research Unit), and the Wageningen University for the partnership. This paper is part of the doctoral study Resilience and sustainability nexus in metropolitan contexts: intersectoral synergies from public policies (FAPESP – proc. n. 2016/25375-5). It is also part of the international project Resilience and vulnerability at the urban nexus of food, water, energy and the environment (ResNexus) (FAPESP – proc. n. 2015/50132-6), a partnership between University of São Paulo/Brazil, University of Sussex/UK/ESRC, and Wageningen University/the Netherlands/NWO. Leandro Giatti also thanks to the National Council for Scientiﬁc and Technological Development (CNPq – proc. n. 309840/2018-0). Lira Luz Benites-Lazaro acknowledges ﬁnancial support received from FAPESP Process: 2017/17796-3, Brazil. Carolina Monteiro de Carvalho acknowledges ﬁnancial support received from FAPESP, Process: 2015/21311-3, Brazil. 40 A. M. URBINATTI ET AL. Disclosure statement No potential conﬂict of interest was reported by the authors. Funding This work was supported by the Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo [2015/ 50132-6, 2016/25375-5, 2017/17796-3, 2015/21311-3]. Leandro Luiz Giatti also thanks to the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Cientíﬁco e Tecnológico [309840/2018-0]. ORCID Alberto Matenhauer Urbinatti http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8257-0167 Lira Luz Benites-Lazaro http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6587-1497 Carolina Monteiro de Carvalho http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1023-0489 Leandro Luiz Giatti http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1154-6503 References Allan C, Xia J, Pahl-Wostl C. 2013. Climate change and water security: challenges for adaptive water management. Curr Opin Environ Sustain. 5(6):625–632. doi:10.1016/j.cosust.2013.09.004. Allouche J, Middleton C, Gyawali D. 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Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Copyright: © 2020 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
ISSN: 1943-8168
eISSN: 1943-815X
DOI: 10.1080/1943815X.2020.1749086
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Abstract

JOURNAL OF INTEGRATIVE ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES 2020, VOL. 17, NO. 2, 21–43 https://doi.org/10.1080/1943815X.2020.1749086 SPECIAL ISSUE: RETHINKING THE URBAN NEXUS The conceptual basis of water-energy-food nexus governance: systematic literature review using network and discourse analysis Alberto Matenhauer Urbinatti , Lira Luz Benites-Lazaro , Carolina Monteiro de Carvalho and Leandro Luiz Giatti School of Public Health, University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY Received 11 March 2019 In the last decade, the debate on the governance of water, energy, Accepted 4 February 2020 and food (WEF) has intensiﬁed, spurring the emergence of the term “nexus governance.” In general, the reduction of trade-oﬀsand con- KEYWORDS struction of synergies between WEF have been placed on the scien- Water-energy-food nexus; tiﬁc, political, and economic agenda. However, although increasingly nexus governance; social used, it is diﬃcult to ﬁnd a clear meaning and deﬁnition of what the network analysis; discourse term represents. Based on a systematic literature review (SLR), using analysis; systematic literature review text-mining and machine learning algorithms, this article investigates what are the conceptual basis of the nexus governance debate, and attempts to clarify the main themes, networks, and gaps within this literature. The analysis is based on quantitative and qualitative meth- ods, combining social network analysis (SNA) and discourse analysis (DA). The results highlighted that twenty-four governance-related concepts support this literature, breaking down into eight groups: water and basin governance; environmental and systems govern- ance; risk and resource security governance; economic governance; global governance; urban governance; integrative and cooperative governance; and “epistemic” and transdisciplinary governance. 1. Introduction In the last decade, many authors have tried to address the governance of water, energy, and food (WEF) holistically. The concept of WEF nexus has allocated this debate. In general, authors agree that the nexus is deﬁned by the integration capacity of diﬀerent sectors from generation to distribution in the search for more viable solutions for the planet. This is amid scenarios of inequalities, scarcity, misdistribution, and misuse of natural resources, and uncertainties associated with global changes (Hoﬀ 2011; Dupar and Oates 2012; Reynolds and Cranston 2014; Allouche et al. 2015;Giatti et al. 2016;Lal 2016). Important events in the last decade fostered the use of the concept, such as the Bonn 2011 Conference, Sixth Edition of Global Risks in 2011, World Water Forum 2012 in Marseilles, Rio+20 in 2012, and Stockholm Water Week in 2014 (Allouche et al. 2015). These conferences addressed integrated solutions in search of global environmental CONTACT Alberto Matenhauer Urbinatti albertourbinatti@usp.br School of Public Health, University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article. © 2020 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. 22 A. M. URBINATTI ET AL. sustainability. The relationships between WEF can be deﬁned as follows. Water is needed to generate energy; energy is needed for the supply of water; energy is needed to produce food; food can be used to produce energy; water is needed to grow food; and food transports (virtual) water, usually using energy (Stringer et al. 2014). Thus, any problem in the management of one resource can directly aﬀect the others (Hussey and Pittock 2012). Since both governance and WEF nexus have diﬀerent meanings in the literature, it is a challenging task to understand them together. Nexus governance seems to appear as an umbrella concept for integrated decision-making and solutions for environmental issues. However, although this association is becoming increasingly common, it is not possible to say that it is an already well-deﬁned concept. A previous non-systematic review on nexus governance was carried out by the Stockholm Environment Institute (Weitz et al. 2017a), which pointed out the main gaps and proposals for the future regarding the governance debate on the WEF nexus. According to the authors, the literature on nexus governance is based on three perspec- tives: risk, economic rationality, and political economy. First, this is an important contribu- tion, as it is the ﬁrst eﬀort to categorize seemingly unrelated studies published in recent years. Another working paper (in the Nexus Network Think Piece Series) by Stein et al. (2014) approaches the discussion on nexus governance by developing a foundation for a strategic action perspective. They recognize that nexus challenges are intrinsically linked to the perceptions, interests, and practices of actors, and construct an approach for the relational understanding of nexus governance. They also emphasize the need to address nexus challenges through existing governance arrangements. Moving forward, in this work we are interested in capturing which are the govern- ance concepts that constitute the literature about WEF nexus governance through a systematic literature review (SLR). It is, therefore, an attempt to understand whether nexus governance can be deﬁned conceptually but also the way this is addressed in the literature. The innovative aspect of this research is to understand the conceptual foundations of nexus governance and identify the diﬀerences found within quantitative and qualitative methods. This includes text-mining tools and machine learning algo- rithms, Social Network Analysis (SNA), and discourse analysis (DA). Three research questions guided this study: What governance concepts constitute nexus literature? What are their main themes and networks within the selected articles? Which are the research gaps in the nexus-governance discussion? The paper is structured as follows: In Section 2 we describe the theoretical background of this research; Section 3 describes materials and methods used in this study; Section 4 presents the results of the study; in Section 5 we discuss the results; Section 6 refers to the research gaps; and ﬁnally in Section 7 we present the ﬁnal remarks. 2. Theoretical background The overlapping of decision-making possibilities is one of the main constraints for nexus governance, which faces the challenge of promoting interaction among pre-existing governance structures (Benson et al. 2015). One idea repeatedly addressed is the need JOURNAL OF INTEGRATIVE ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES 23 to “break down the silos” (Cairns and Krzywoszynska 2016). That is, there is progressive encouragement to expand research and policy decisions beyond specialized knowledge and traditional governance structures based on sectors. The possibility that WEF interac- tions go beyond the siloes can be supported by two concepts: trade-oﬀs and synergies. Trade-oﬀs analysis may reveal priorities in the governance process and inform locally deﬁned norms of fairness in interventions. Institutional synergies can determine progress in ensuring balance and mitigation of possible rebound eﬀects in environmental planning and management (Kurian et al. 2016). Besides, robust synergy can be deﬁned by knowl- edge exchange among and across diﬀerent sectors, enhancement of capacities by key players and the appropriation by agencies and departments of ﬁnancing and technology (Gregory 1997). Ultimately, the two concepts present similarities; “trade-oﬀs” refers to a compromise that involves negotiation, while “synergies” means that inter-connection necessitates collective action (Kurian et al. 2016). Based on this, institutional arrangements and governance structures in the nexus approach can be guided by 1) intersectionality, 2) interactionality and 3) hybridity (Kurian and Kardanian, 2015). These three components are much more uncertain possi- bilities than achieved characteristics. It would be necessary to change the intersection between material ﬂows, ﬁnancing and institutions; the vertical and horizontal interaction between economy, politics and society; and the analysis based on hybridity and trans- disciplinarity (Kurian et al. 2016). To some extent, this approach interacts with many governance concepts, focusing on integrative governance across diverse sectors and actors. Governance has increasingly become a fashionable term, gaining traction from the “Our Global Neighborhood” report in 1995 (Commission on Global Governance 1995). It has also been the subject of multiple disciplines and kinds of literature, all of which give the term governance diﬀerent meanings (Kersbergen and Waarden 2004). At least six diﬀerent uses were selected, namely as the minimal state, corporate governance, new public management, “good governance,” socio-cybernetic system, and self-organizing networks (Rhodes 1996; Pierre and Peters 2000). Despite their use in diverse disciplines, including development studies, economics, political science and international relations, law, planning, geography, business administration, public administration, sociology, and history. However, the concept could precisely connect diﬀerent disciplines and thus stimulate comparisons between quite diﬀerent phenomena (Kersbergen and Waarden 2004). Essentially, governance was portrayed as socio-political and understood to have complex processes and interactions, constituting patterns of law (Bevir 2011; Benites- Lazaro et al. 2018a). “It replaces a focus on the formal institutions of states and govern- ments with recognition of the diverse activities that often blur the boundary of state and society” (Bevir 2011, p. 2). Thus, following the work of Stoker (1998), governance can be understood as a set of institutions and actors beyond the boundaries of government. The term identiﬁes diﬀerent responsibilities for tackling social and economic issues, as well as power dependencies involved between institutions. In addition, governance can represent an autonomous self-governing network of actors, recognizing capacities beyond the con- trol of the government but also seeing the latter as able to use new tools as a guide (Stoker 1998). 24 A. M. URBINATTI ET AL. 3. Materials and methods 3.1. Methods In this study, we ﬁrst performed social network analysis (SNA), a tool that facilitates communication between a group of actors (individuals or organizations) called nodes. Nodes are coupled by some common ground, such as interests, ﬁnancial exchanges, friendships, dislikes, knowledge, prestige, etc. SNA operates on many levels, from family relationships and disease-spreading to the level of corporate strategies, social movements or even nations. This method is a way to re-incorporate context and bridge the gap between the micro and the macro, the cells constituting the animal, the individuals constituting groups, or the actors constituting a political system. This also allows research- ers to retain the traditional units of recording, while simultaneously broadening the perspective by including information about the relationships across these units. This additional structural information allows researchers to address existing research ques- tions using new tools, approaching them from a diﬀerent theoretical perspective (Benites- Lazaro et al. 2018b). Second, discourse analysis (DA), which consists of a set of techniques for the structured research of texts. It is “the study of language-in-use and is employed to engender a range of meanings varying from the analysis of linguistic regularities to the normative quality of discussions” (Benites-Lazaro et al. 2018b, p. 320). Similar to Benites- Lazaro et al. (2018b) in this study, we used a mixed-method for the DA, in order to take advantage of both qualitative and quantitative techniques. It assumes that, both, the number of word repetitions performed by software and the exploratory lexical patterns, play important roles in textual analysis. The analyses were deemed necessary to cope with the in-depth examination of twenty-eight articles. The aim was to ﬁnd community and a relationship among themes, surrounding nexus governance and discovery patterns, and extract elementary contexts. Through this, a qualitative analysis could be conducted to identify the context of predominant discourses on nexus governance. 3.2. Materials The data collected are articles from the database of Scopus, Web of Science and Science Direct over the period 2007–2018 with the keyword “water-energy-food nexus” and “water-energy-food nexus AND governance.” The results of the collection were 1455 articles (N = 1455). The SLR was performed in two steps. First, we cleaned the duplicate articles. After this, we applied to this big data the open-source software Gephi for visual exploration of networks and compute centrality measures. This is a network analytic tool that is used to represent the nodes (themes) and edges (relationships) in a network to analyse the network data (Benites-Lazaro et al. 2018c). Second, the searches were dee- pened using T-Lab software, performing text-mining and machine learning to select only articles in English that focus on “water-energy-food nexus AND governance” in titles, abstracts and keywords in the same period (2007–2018). We did not consider papers that dealt with only one or two elements of the nexus, such as only “water” or “water-energy”: the three elements would need to appear together. Moreover, books, book chapters, working papers, conference papers, and reports were excluded. The N is twenty-eight papers. JOURNAL OF INTEGRATIVE ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES 25 3.3. Data analysis Quantitative and qualitative analysis were performed using the T-Lab software. This pro- gram uses a set of statistical, linguistic, and graphic tools to analyse texts (Lancia 2012). In general, the steps of this software are the processing of documents creating a database, its transformation creating a target data, text mining discovering patterns and, ﬁnally, the interpretation that creates knowledge. One advantage is that it facilitates mixing qualitative and quantitative methods, performing a quantitative treatment of textual data, and enabling a qualitative analysis of the results to understand the discourse (Benites-Lazaro et al. 2018a). The adjacency matrix of the network (a matrix where each element [i, j] is equal to the weight of the arc from Node i to Node j was performed, using T-Lab software. This included: i) an ego network analysis (ENA), using T-Lab software; ii) discourse analysis (DA), also using T-Lab software; and iii) social network analysis (SNA), using the open-source software SocNetV (Social Network Visualizer) for visual exploration of the networks. ENA enables a description of the relationship and role of the “ego” in its social network. The network is composed of one user centring the graph (the ego), all users linked to this ego (called “alters”), and all relations between the alters (Benites-Lazaro and Andrade 2019). One objective of using this method was to identify the most important themes linked to governance, in the context of the WEF nexus. Hence, a network measure enabled comparing of the centralities of the ego “governance,” in our sample. The result is a mini- network, or immediate neighbourhood surrounding an ego that can, perhaps, reveal something important about the theme or social world from the ego’s perspective (Benites-Lazaro and Andrade 2019). The diﬀerent metrics of the SocNetV are: a) Degree Centrality (DC), which quantiﬁes how many ties a node has compared to other nodes in the network, indicating a measure of actor activity; b) Closeness Centrality (CC), which focuses on how close each node is to all other nodes in the network, that is, nodes with high CC are those who can reach many other nodes in a few steps; and c) Betweenness Centrality (BC) shows that each actor can be interpreted as a measure of potential control as it quantiﬁes just how much that actor acts as an intermediary to others. An actor which lies between many others is assumed to have a higher likelihood of being able to control information ﬂow in the network (Kalamaras 2019). 4. Results 4.1. Social network analysis (SNA) Figure 1 shows the SNA applied in the 1455 articles (N ) to identify the term “governance” within the research in the theme WEF nexus. “Governance” appear with 7 value of frequency. This value is not representative if compared with the topic “water-energy” that has 54 of frequency or topic such as “food security” with 18, and “climate change” with 16 of frequency. The frequency represents the count of the number of times the keyword appears by using the TF-IDF measure. This measure allows us to evaluate the weight of a term (lexical unit) within a document (context unit). Table 1 shows the values for Figure 1. Figure 2 shows the ego network analysis (ENA) for the word “governance” applied to the N highlighting topics with a high probability of predecessor connection such as f, “water” (0.08 or 8%) follow by the topic “nexus” with probability 5% of links, and topic 26 A. M. URBINATTI ET AL. Figure 1. The network of subjects on water-energy-food nexus-related research. Source: The authors. Table 1. Values referring to Figure 1. Keywords Freq Keywords Freq Keywords Freq water_energy 54 sustainable_development 11 climate_change_adaptation 6 water_energy_food 46 virtual_water 10 integrated_water_resources_management 6 water 36 policy 10 water_scarcity 6 energy 32 wastewater_treatment 9 bioenergy 6 sustainability 22 hydropower 9 trade_oﬀs6 water_footprint 19 ecosystem_services 9 wef 6 food_security 18 energy_eﬃciency 9 water_resources_management 6 food 17 irrigation 8 environment 5 climate_change 16 water_supply 8 biomass 5 water_resources 13 water_management 8 integrated_assessment 5 renewable_energy 12 governance 7 sustainable_development_goals 5 desalination 11 energy_security 7 biofuel 5 life_cycle_assessment 11 drought 7 uncertainty 5 water_security 11 resilience 6 water_use 5 “environmental” and “urban” with (4%) and (3%) of probability respectively. Topics as successors of governance or those words that appear after the word governance are “system” (4%), “structure” (3%), and “process” (3%). Also, it was possible to identify some of the concepts that most relate to the word governance. They are: “water”, “nexus”, JOURNAL OF INTEGRATIVE ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES 27 Figure 2. Ego network for the word “governance”. Source: The authors Table 2. Values referring to Figure 2. Prob “Governance” predecessor “Governance” successor Prob 0.08 water system 0.04 0.05 neuxs structure 0.03 0.04 environmental process 0.03 0.03 urban water 0.02 0.02 good analysis 0.02 0.02 security approach 0.02 0.02 multi-level gap 0.02 0.02 global nexus 0.02 0.02 reﬂexive research 0.02 0.01 level arrangement 0.02 0.01 exist strategy 0.01 0.01 management challenge 0.01 0.01 policycentric mechanism 0.01 0.01 resource management 0.01 0.01 sustainability policy 0.01 0.01 diﬀerent complex 0.01 0.01 integrate understanting 0.01 0.01 policy wef-nexus 0.01 0.01 system global 0.01 0.01 adaptation policy 0.01 “environmental”, “good”, “global”, “urban”, “polycentric”, “multi-level”, “reﬂexive”, and “security”. This analysis focuses only on the closest connections. Table 2 shows the values for Figure 2. While Figure 2 focuses on the network from a single word, Figure 3 shows more diverse groups of words. Figure 3 shows the network analysis employing centrality and connec- tions between themes in the N . The three metrics (DC, CC and BC) indicate thirty-eight f 28 A. M. URBINATTI ET AL. Figure 3. Degree Centrality, Closeness Centrality and Betweenness Centrality applied to N f. Source: The authors. “actors” with some degree of centrality. The words “water” and “nexus” are prominent, i.e., those with the highest degree of connection. The word with the highest DC value is “energy,” indicating a large number of arches from it; the word with the highest CC value is “nexus;” and the word with the highest BC value is “water,” evidencing that it is the main intermediary among the other actors. From DC and CC it is possible to notice, besides those more frequent words like “nexus,”“water,”“energy,”“food,”“approach” and “gov- ernance,” the most prominent words are “policy integration” and “sustainable develop- ment.” In addition, the centrality of the words “climate change” and “economic” in DC, and “environmental,”“security” and “management” in CC are highlighted in the table below. Table 3 shows the values for Figure 3. 4.2. Systematization and discourse analysis (DA) of the literature The systematization was performed following the qualitative research from the elemen- tary contexts provided by the T-Lab software, which allows identifying the context of predominant discourses on nexus governance and the categorization of diﬀerent con- cepts that constitute the literature on nexus governance from the diﬀerent scientiﬁc research. Table 4 summarizes the concepts used by the authors, the main focus of the articles, and correlation with nexus governance. This also helps to clarify the relationships resulting not only from DA but also from SNA. 5. Discussion The mixed-methods used in this paper provided diverse possibilities to reﬂect on the associations found. SLR is an important tool when there is uncertainty about the evidence on a topic, with the main objective of clarifying some issue in a detailed and organized way (Petticrew and Roberts 2006). The SNA can provide analyses and visualizations of multiple relational measures, such as centrality, to support research hypotheses. In the case of WEF nexus, the SNA has the potential to make visible complex interactions, for example, between ﬁnancing, technology and leadership in conditions of scale and limits previously deﬁned, showing if the character of the decisions about water, energy and JOURNAL OF INTEGRATIVE ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES 29 Table 3. Values referring to Figure 3. Node Label DC CC BC 1 country 1.136130 5.144472 0.000000 2 resource 5.053780 10.038323 0.000000 3 world 1.423530 5.892662 0.000000 4 challenge 1.529410 6.136923 0.000000 5 process 1.574790 10.585003 0.000000 6 system 2.361340 7.636276 0.000000 7 government 1.000000 8.007078 0.000000 8 production 1.937820 6.953677 0.000000 9 climate 4.057150 6.623620 0.000000 10 security 3.813450 9.211764 0.000000 11 global 2.436970 7.744224 0.000000 12 change 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000 13 food 8.910920 11.399594 0.000000 14 issue 2.119330 12.364489 0.000000 15 economic 3.225210 5.970632 0.000000 16 management 3.541180 8.980117 0.000000 17 state 1.090760 5.013329 0.000000 18 problem 1.151260 8.776500 0.000000 19 sustainability 1.226890 9.134206 0.000000 20 policy 6.174790 13.129889 0.000000 21 governance 4.115970 16.180571 0.000000 22 energy 10.000000 11.624536 0.000000 23 sector 2.527730 7.868926 0.000000 24 development 7.475630 13.542240 0.000000 25 decision 1.393280 9.865136 0.000000 26 integration 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000 27 institutional 1.151260 5.187346 0.000000 28 environmental 1.695800 11.025700 0.000000 29 approach 5.189920 17.357212 0.000000 30 social 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000 31 focus 1.287390 5.554934 0.000000 32 level 1.831930 5.013021 0.000000 33 water 8.610090 13.862694 68.000000 34 nexus 2.680670 24.063813 58.000000 35 sustainable 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000 36 political 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000 37 analysis 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000 38 include 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000 Note: DC range: 0 ≤ DC ≤∞ (node energy); BC range: 0 ≤ BC ≤ 1260 (node water); CC range: 0 ≤ CC ≤ 0.0277778 (node nexus). food are coordinated or siloed (Kurian et al. 2018). In this paper, the SNA was used not for physical actors, but for protagonist words within the text corpus of the twenty-eight selected articles. DA is an important complement to understanding interactions, seeking to identify the relationship between linguistic regularities such as meanings, purpose and negotiations through discourse (Suciu 2019). The ﬁrst network analysis (Figure 1) showed that “governance” is not central in all articles collected primarily. This result illustrates that the concept of governance within WEF nexus research is underdeveloped. Figure 1 shows the predominance in researches of two sectors “water-energy” or “energy-water” and “water-food.” Due to the water- centred nature and trend in many studies, some researchers have criticized that the current analyses of the link are insuﬃciently intersectoral, or even a new challenge to be consolidated towards integration (Benson et al. 2015). The focus on water alone undermines the original intention of developing an explicit intersectoral perspective and response options to replace the traditional sectors (Smajgl et al. 2016). In addition, 30 A. M. URBINATTI ET AL. Table 4. Concepts, focus and correlation with nexus governance. CONCEPT AUTHORS FOCUS CORRELATION WITH NEXUS GOVERNANCE WATER GOVERNANCE Gupta et al. 2013 Literature review on the state-of-the-art of water governance It does not go deeper into the concept; it only recognizes that (WG) science single-sector water governance is not suﬃcient to regulate land, agriculture, and other issues. It needs to be a cross- sector process. TRANSBOUNDARY BASIN Al-Said and Hefny, 2018 Analysis of regional cooperation in the Eastern Nile Basin The WEF Nexus approach can be useful for highlighting key GOVERNANCE (TBG) neglected issues on interlinked resources, at the basin and regional levels. INTEGRATED WATER Hagemann and Kirschke 2017 How to strengthen nexus governance analysis from IWRM The importance of existing and useful governance strategies as RESOURCE Benson et al. 2015 experiences conditions for governance transitions. Governance analysis MANAGEMENT (IWRM) Relation between IWRM and nexus should refer to diﬀerent types of problems, contexts, and inter- and transdisciplinary research. Both IWRM and nexus provide guidance on optical governance. Nexus aim at policy coherence and multi-level interaction, but the concept provides few normative principles on how governance should occur. SOCIO-ECOLOGICAL Giampietro 2018 Perception and representation of the nexus at the interface The concept of SES lends itself, particularly well, to the purpose SYSTEM (SES) Al-Said & Elagib, 2017 between society and the natural environment of the abandonment of the current technocratic and top- Villamayor-Tomas et al. 2015 Literature review on WEF nexus down approach. Value-chain and institutional analysis of four irrigation-related Nexus governance is the missing link in the nexus debate. It cases studies holds the promise of needed innovations and reconstructing policy and institutions to tackle issues of resource use and security. The conceptual bridge between value chains and institutional analysis would seem well-suited to the challenge of understanding nexus research, given the importance of resource ﬂows and governance dynamics in these coupled systems. ECOSYSTEM SERVICES (ES) Pahl-Wostl et al., 2017 Analytical framework, using a network and ecosystem services The concept of Ecosystem Services (ES) may help to (a) to identify coordination failures and persistent sustainability operationalize the WEF nexus in terms of trade-oﬀs and problems, as well as leverage points for transformative synergies, (b) develop a common language to negotiate change risks, framed according to diﬀerent logics in diﬀerent security concepts (c) support the integration of fragmented institutional settings, and (d) encourage negotiation and cooperation among ES users. Thus, if combined with appropriate multi-level governance settings, the ES concept may become instrumental in supporting transformative change, overcoming sustainability deﬁcits in the WEF nexus. (Continued) JOURNAL OF INTEGRATIVE ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES 31 Table 4. (Continued). CONCEPT AUTHORS FOCUS CORRELATION WITH NEXUS GOVERNANCE INTEGRATIVE Weitz et al., 2017b Literature review on the IEG literature The IEG literature oﬀers analytical insights that could help close ENVIRONMENTAL Visseren-Hamakers 2015 gaps in the nexus literature, in relation to the conditions for GOVERNANCE (IEG) cross-sector coordination and collaboration, dynamics beyond cross-sector interactions, and political and cognitive factors, such as determinants of change. Since 2010, the IEG literature has turned to the WEF nexus debate. These studies have focused on governance systems, at all levels, prioritizing policies and sectors. ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE Middleton et al. 2015 Mapping of the rise of the WEF nexus as a research, policy, and Introducing the concept of EJ into the nexus, especially where (EJ) project agenda, in mainland Southeast Asia. narratives, trade-oﬀs, and outcomes are contested, could make better use of how the nexus is framed, understood, and acted upon. GLOBAL GOVERNANCE Boas et al. 2016 It contributes to the institutionalization of a “nexus approach,” Proposition for the new High-level Political Forum and Global (GG) in the global institutional setting of the Sustainable Sustainable Development Report to adopt a nexus Development Goals. perspective. It also emphasizes the importance of designing partnerships that are focused on cross-national nexuses in sustainable development. GLOBAL FINANCIAL Schimdt & Matthews, 2018 The role of global ﬁnancial networks in articulating the nexus The shift from ‘state to system’ of the nexus structures draws NETWORKS (GFN) and connecting it to sustainability programmes on the repertoire of ﬁnancial techniques that delineate facts of the world descriptions of complex, adaptive systems – and makes accounts of the integrated dynamics linking economies, environments, and societies. WORLD GOVERNANCE Zisopoulo et al., 2018 It establishes the existence of the WEF Nexus approach, in Rethink the role of an actor with a new quantitative Economic (WG) a more concrete way, and includes proposals for holistic and Platform working in a new knowledge-based management increased internal structure and for a set of rules, recasting system, by employing trade-oﬀs, synergies, acts of inﬂuence, the current role into that of an actor with a Computable intermediation and governance which are suitable to the General Equilibrium platform. new state of world governance and its main players. GOVERNANCE OF GLOBAL Amorim et al. 2018 Understanding how the global risks impact the nexus between Risk management can contribute to more eﬀective RISKS (GGR) water, energy, and food through a systemic analysis governance. It also emphasizes the failure of national and regional, or global governance, as geopolitical risk to water, energy, and food. INNOVATIVE GOVERNANCE Gallagher et al. 2016 The policy and research agenda on the WEF nexus needs to The article proposes three points for sustainable development: OF SHARED RISKS (IGSR) consider dimensions of shared risks externalities and shared risks across multiple scales; innovative government mechanisms for shared risks; and negotiating the balance between silos, politics, and power in addressing shared risks. (Continued) 32 A. M. URBINATTI ET AL. Table 4. (Continued). CONCEPT AUTHORS FOCUS CORRELATION WITH NEXUS GOVERNANCE GOVERNANCE OF NEXUS Beck and Walker 2013 Insights from cross-system mapping to assess the role of city High quality governance entails granting access to the debate, SECURITY governance in achieving nexus security (or not) and the role for instance, how to manage the man-environment (GNS) of technological innovations in serving the same purpose relationship – by each of the three actively engaged parties: individualists (I), hierarchists (H), or egalitarians (E). Each of the three will have a voice in the debate. URBAN GOVERNANCE (UG) Artioli et al. 2017 ‘Urbanize’ the nexus agenda and consider the implications of It is important to take the nexus out of the global resources policy integration for urban governance management debate and resituate it in broader political debates about government transformations in urban measures. Additionally, recognize the nexus as more of a driver policy change than a threat. COOPERATIVE Sperling & Raswami, 2017 Review of city case studies to inform a framework, for The application of Ostrom’s CG principles to city carbon and GOVERNANCE developing urban infrastructure design standards and policy water budgets. Encouraging systems approaches at the (CG) instruments, in order to achieve energy eﬃciency and nexus sectors may improve the management of successful greenhouse gas mitigation through city carbon budgets and “budget-based” approaches across sectors. It also suggests water use eﬃciency improvements in governance process to carbon and water budgets, such as the development of appropriate incentive, enforcement, and ﬂexible mechanisms, among others. GOOD GOVERNANCE Lele et al. 2013 It uses examples from recent global developments (and from Contextualized solutions to challenges of WEF nexus security (GG) China and India) to place empirical analysis of governance should be considered. Beyond that, develop an issues at the top of global agenda understanding of the roles, and linkages, between policies and institutions at various political and administrative levels. It requires the involvement of all stakeholders, and their collective impacts, on the short- and long-run outcomes. POLICY INTEGRATION Gain et al. 2015 Review of the emerging literature on the water-energy-food PI is essential for implementing the WEF nexus approach. In (PI) (WEF) nexus and, then, analyzes the nexus in the context of this way, inter-ministerial collaboration is required among Bangladesh the Ministry of Water Resources, Ministry of Power, Energy and Mineral Resources, Ministry of Food, Ministry of Environment and Forest, and other relevant ministries and government bodies. Also, collaborative problem-solving processes are required through participation of the diﬀerent level stakeholders. INTER-GOVERNANCE Mohtar 2016 It examines the governance of the nexus, understanding The implementation of the nexus requires an “inter- (IG) capacity building and models or tools available to support governance” unit that operates to bridge the gaps between decision makers. diﬀerent ministries, while understanding and implementing the cross-cutting and integrative nature of the nexus. (Continued) JOURNAL OF INTEGRATIVE ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES 33 Table 4. (Continued). CONCEPT AUTHORS FOCUS CORRELATION WITH NEXUS GOVERNANCE ORGANIZATIONAL Harwood 2018 It presents an approach that addresses the complexity that The approach of the Viable System Model presents a powerful GOVERNANCE (OG) characterizes the WEF nexus in the context of the Mekong means to address the complexity of the WEF nexus and, as River Basin. such, should be used in an appropriate “mess” to demonstrate the reality of its potential. Organizational governance issues are eﬀectively modelled using the VSM, revealing the multi-level perspective and drawing attention to the relevant governance mechanisms. GOVERNANCE OF SOCIO- Daher et al. 2018 It presents a framework for resource and stakeholder The STEP framework oﬀers guidance through the diﬀerent TECHNO-ECONOMIC- interactions and trade-oﬀs, addressing governance and elements that need to be accounted for while assessing and POLITICAL (STEP) NEXUS ﬁnancing schemes for carrying forward the implementation promoting a nexus solution. Proposing feasible, SOLUTION of those scenarios implementable, sustainable solutions requires truly inclusive transdisciplinary conceptualization, quantiﬁcation, and assessment of current and projected resource hotspots. KNOWLEDGE CO- Howarth and Monasterolo Decision-making in response to shocks to the WEF nexus and Transdisciplinary approaches to knowledge production, such as PRODUCTION (KCP) 2016 barriers to the application of a transdisciplinary approach participatory workshops, helps overcome gaps in the research-policy interface. Also, it is important to understand characteristics of the nexus to build resilience to shocks, thus, tackling risk. REFLEXIVE GOVERNANCE Halbe et al. 2015 Methodological framework to analyse sustainability The reﬂexive governance approach can induce a sustainability (RG) innovations in the water-energy-food nexus and strategies transition, and learning processes have to take place, for governing transition processes in Cyprus simultaneously, at diﬀerent levels. Participatory model- building, using the causal loops diagram (CLD), turned out to be a suitable method to systematically analyse stakeholder perceptions on issues in the WEF nexus. GOVERNANCE HEURISTIC Müller et al. 2015 This review article argues for systematic nexus thinking, based The nexus thinking and landscape lens, in combination with (GH) on the intrinsically linked systems of soil, water, and virtual resource cycles, oﬀers an opportunity to address biodiversity. trade-oﬀs and utilize existing synergies to develop pathways towards integrated resource governance. It may serve as a GH to implement the post-2015 Development Agenda in a variety of national contexts. Hence, nexus thinking may serve as a GH for nation states to understand and, subsequently, operationalize the implementation of the post-2015 Development Agenda. TRANSDISCIPLINARY Kurian 2017 It focuses on implications of the nexus approach for public An institutional framework that accounts for the role of the APPROACHES (TA) policy formulation, implementation, and monitoring, and government in shaping individual behaviour, with regard to emphasizing the importance of transdisciplinary management and use of environmental resources, needs to approaches. be delineated. It highlights the need to look at ecosystem and public services. Transdisciplinary approaches have the potential to better shape the translation of scientiﬁc results to respond to global challenges. Source: The authors based on literature review. 34 A. M. URBINATTI ET AL. isolated sector investments risk prioritizing the goals of one speciﬁc sector over others. Integrated analytical approaches that understand the complexity of WEF nexus can identify intersectoral trade-oﬀs and internalize driving forces that might otherwise be overlooked in dual-sector approaches (Miralles-Wilhelm 2016). From both Figure 2 and the DA, it was also possible to identify the “water centrism” as the literature on the nexus suggests (Allan et al. 2013; Schimdt and Matthews, 2018). Even though the concept of water governance is not the main concept in most articles, the vast majority recognize this centrality. Those using more focused concepts are Gupta et al. (2013) (water governance), Al-Said & Hefny, (2018) (Transboundary Basin Governance – TBG) and Hagemann and Kirschke (2017)and Benson et al.(2015) (Integrated Water Resources Management – IWRM). According to Gupta et al. (2013), the global water crisis cannot be solved through technocratic and depoliticized management or engineering processes; it needs a radical political challenge, from a global to the local level (glocal). Since TBG has historically been focused on state and water-related issues, the nexus approach extends the scope to important sectors such as agriculture and energy (Al-Saidi and Hefny 2018). This crucial connection between governance and water is precisely related to a legacy of the Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) approach. This concept encom- passes many principles with a holistic and systemic view, and while it seems closely related to the nexus concept, it diﬀers in certain aspects (Benson et al. 2015). Two points bridge this relation. First, IWRM was an attempt to create governance reform and integrate water with other policy objectives (Pahl-Wostl et al. 2011; Pahl-Wostl 2017). Second, IWRM researchers and practitioners have generated important lessons that can help analyse and implement nexus governance (Hagemann and Kirschke 2017). Regarding the diﬀerences, the one that interests us most is related to governance approaches. Benson et al. (2012), (2015)) show that nexus conceptualizations provide few normative principles on how governance should occur, while IWRM is often based on “good governance” principles, fostering transparency, and collaborative decision-making. The World Bank introduced “good governance” in the 1990 s as part of a controversial neoliberal agenda concerning the public sector, but it also brought important incentives to the ideas of representative and responsible government and absence of corruption (Bevir 2013). However, this term may represent other diﬀerent ideas, such as an objective solution of policy problems through decision-making, political dimensions of the exten- sion to which decision-making processes are open and democratic, political assessment of the success of decisions, among others (Bevir 2011). Although more frequent in IWRM, the discussion on good governance has also recurred in selected papers. In the work of Lele et al. (2013), good governance assumes the merits concerning the enhancement of a personal and collective security sense within a community and its representativeness. Gupta et al. (2013) reinforce that even the fact that good governance has the potential to achieve multi-level coherence, there is ten- sions and trade-oﬀs between eﬀectiveness, participation and legitimacy. Pahl-Wostl et al., (2017) show the importance of engagement in supporting the design and the implemen- tation of polycentric arrangements and the possibility of enabling good governance principles such as multi-level and coordinated systems of governance. Also from Figure 2, the word “system” appeared as strictly related to “governance.” It is not new to think that the nexus is an interconnected system between WEF. However, it can be deduced that if there is a unit in this literature, it can be tangible from the idea of a JOURNAL OF INTEGRATIVE ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES 35 “system.” It is also not novel to think about the world in a systemic and integrated way, even considering socio-political dimensions. For example, the Harappan civilization, which existed from 3300 to 1300 BC in the Indus Valley, proposed an “Ecological Consciousness.” Other examples include “The discourse of the culture of nature” by the Assyrian king Assurbanipal in Mesopotamia (2700 BC) and “The Rig Veda” holistic approach by peoples from north-west India from 1500 to 1000 BC (Lal 2016). In the last century, we ﬁnd exponents such as the controversial General Systems Theory by Ludwig von Bertalanﬀy, who sought to approach holistically from a biological perspective alternatives to the methodological reductionism imposed by the Industrial Revolution (Hammond 2003). In contemporary times, an example is a great eﬀort made through Earth System Governance and the Sustainable Development Goals to face climate change in an integrated way. Perhaps the great contribution of the WEF nexus is to bring to the debate diﬀerent sectors of society, which are often on opposite sides of the debate, in an attempt to incorporate systems thinking into the policy-making process (Bazilian et al. 2011). What is important here is that the idea of “systems thinking” deﬁnes some fundamental concepts in the nexus analyses. For instance, “water-energy-food system,”“resource system,” “ecosystem service,”“socio-ecological system,”“management system,”“urban infrastructure system” and “viable system models.” According to Pahl-Wostl (2017), nexus governance encompasses a broad understanding of governance in terms of political, social, economic, and administrative systems that determine the use of WEF and related service delivery. Harwood (2018) argued that a systems approach faces many challenges such as asking what should be recognized within the system in terms of its boundaries. It is, therefore, necessary to rethink conceptual boundaries to better ﬁt this integration as a natural system to improve the decision-making process (Weitz et al. 2017b). The WEF nexus approach requires new models of analysis based on complex systems thinking (Giampietro 2018)aswellas facilitates the shift of techniques from state to system (Schmidt and Matthews 2018). This shift takes place, for example, in the repertoire of ﬁnancial techniques that consider the integrated dynamics linking economies, environments, and societies. Figure 3 shows that in addition to the prominence of “water” and “nexus,” it is possible to identify the centrality of the terms “policy integration” and “sustainable development.” Environmental policy integration has been a widely debated concept since the publica- tion of the Brundtland report, in 1987 (Boas et al. 2016; Weitz et al. 2017b). According to Gain et al. (2015), policy integration is essential for implementing the WEF nexus approach. This has been addressed in this literature mainly from the need to expand the levels of governance towards sustainable development. The term “multi-level” becomes important in this context, as shown in Figure 2. Harwood et al. (2018) clarify that governance should be viewed as multi-tiered, nested, and at multiple levels. In other words, cross-scale governance arrangements should be tied to nexus systems integration (Sperling and Raswami, 2017). In contrast, as Artioli et al. (2017) said, policy integration should not be considered to be inherently beneﬁcial; it needs to consider the power relations that shape policy change. That is, it is crucial to understand the negotiation process of possible policy integrations, considering whether, and how, cross-sectoral policies can contribute to universal, equitable, and sustainable access to resources. Sustainable development is one of the debates present in the WEF nexus approach because the concept is closely related with the ecological modernization debate (Wiegleb and Bruns 2018). Nevertheless, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are 36 A. M. URBINATTI ET AL. important bases for the nexus debate (Boas et al. 2016; Pahl-Wostl 2017; Amorim et al. 2018; Schmidt and Matthews 2018; Daher et al. 2018). The nexus literature often relates climate change as an element of the nexus as important as water, energy and food (Benson et al. 2015). Global climate change trends and competitive land-use patterns have dispelled the systemic ability to compensate for increased demand in an integrated manner that is both reliable and orderly (Zisopoulou et al. 2018). It can be said that the dimension of security and risk is closely associated with climate change (Amorim et al. 2018). Gallagher et al. (2016) remarked that risks could be better addressed if policy-makers increased the use of ﬂexible governance mechanisms at multiple scales through the decentra- lization of authority. In this case, polycentric governance, which gained impetus in the 1960 s, and integrative environmental governance can be appropriate concepts to provide it (Visseren-Hamakers 2015). Weitz et al. (2017b) argued that nexus governance is to some extent a question of environmental governance. Figure 3 also illustrates the importance of socio-economic perspectives. As Zisopoulo et al. (2018) indicate, socio-economic factors are associated with the structure of the particular economy and actors proﬁle which leads to policy deter- mination. Weitz et al. (2017b) argued that in nexus governance, a technical and administrative matter prevails, which often focuses on optimizing system perfor- mance. This is why the WEF nexus is commonly understood from a ﬁnancial per- spective. In general, ﬁnancialization describes patterns of accumulation that accrue proﬁt. However, Schimidt and Matthews (2018) believe that it is not a defence of capitalism, but a harbinger of how this shift from “state to system” draws based on ﬁnancial techniques that delineate facts of the world. The possibilities of implement- ing the nexus are directly associated with saving resources, in other words, ﬁnancial savings (Mohtar 2016). This is a relevant feature of the WEF nexus because it brings to the debate important economic actors in the global scenario such as the World Bank and World Economic Forum. Notwithstanding, most authors understand that economic development should be associated with social development, especially of marginalized groups with restricted access to resources (Middleton et al. 2015). “Solutions for such complex, interconnected, and uncertain problems cannot be only technical; they cannot account only for physical resource constraints, or oﬀer only socio-economic, technological, political, or ﬁnancial interventions.” (Daher et al. 2018,p.08). Based on the diﬀerent methods, it is concluded that eight themes are central to this literature: i) water centrism; ii) systems; iii) policy integration; iv) sustainable development v) environmental governance; vi) social-economics and management; vii) resource secur- ity; and viii) climate change. Finally, as shown in Table 4, twenty-four concepts correlated with nexus governance were identiﬁed in the papers analysed. They use diﬀerent approaches to look at the same issue, which is the governance of water, energy and food together. In another synthesis eﬀort, it can be said that the concepts related to governance are grouped into: water and basin governance; environmental and systems governance; risk and resource security governance; economic governance; global govern- ance; urban governance; integrative and cooperative governance; and “epistemic” and transdisciplinary governance. Figure 4 illustrates these groups. JOURNAL OF INTEGRATIVE ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES 37 Figure 4. Thematic groups of concepts related to nexus governance. Source: The authors. 6. Research gaps in this literature Three gaps were noted in this review. The ﬁrst of these is the lack of theoretical approaches that deﬁne the concept of nexus governance more densely. According to Figure 1, few of the 1455 papers initially found develop the governance theme within the nexus literature. Most of those who develop merely recommended the necessity of nexus governance, and did not clarify how this should be implemented. In other words, governance has often appeared as a “recommendation”. Only twenty-eight articles focused more closely on the topic. The most common strategy was to associate more established concepts of governance theory with the nexus debate. Nevertheless, twenty- four concepts were found as central. On the one hand, this represents how nexus studies have diversiﬁed over recent years. This is convenient, as nexus-related methods may acknowledge ambiguities, complexities, uncertainties, and ignorance to alleviate pressure on appraisal (Stirling 2015). On the other, it is an opportunity for future theoretical studies on nexus governance to strengthen the concept. The second gap is related to participatory approaches and methods. Al-Said and Elagib (2017) point out the unclear dimension in the nexus literature regarding the participatory measures needed to achieve policy integration. Gain et al. (2015) propose that ministries should formulate policies in dialogue with stakeholders, experts, professionals, non- governmental organizations (NGOs), and the private sector through participatory approaches. Howarth and Monasterolo (2016) applied a participatory and bottom-up interdisciplinary approach, collecting and analysing data from workshops in the UK with stakeholders in the ﬁeld of business and ﬁnance, knowledge production, and policy- 38 A. M. URBINATTI ET AL. making, identifying barriers to the nexus. Halbe et al. (2015) indicate participatory model building using Causal Loop Diagrams (CLDs) as a suitable method for analysing stake- holder perceptions on issues in the WEF nexus and related sustainability innovations. In this way, participatory approaches are promoted as a means to address integrated management problems and support the development of a systemic understanding among sectors and actors to search for innovative ways to cooperate and collaborate. The above examples show that these methods are being applied by some authors, however, in general, the science produced towards the WEF nexus is still little open to diﬀerent knowledge, such as traditional knowledge. The third gap follows this argument; it is the lack of critical approaches to the nexus debate itself. Similarly to Williams et al. (2019, p. 663), who questioned “[. . .] what is the political performativity of nexus thinking?,” pointing out that there is little visibility for nexus politics and therefore a need for a more progressive concept of integration. In this review, it can be noted that some authors mention the power relations that exist in governance processes, but few of them discuss beyond the institutions and political actors, showing the very power of science being produced in this direction. Hagemann and Kirschke (2017) believe that to address nexus issues in governance, it is necessary to improve inter and transdisciplinary collaboration. Otherwise, one can note barriers due to the lack of involvement of the relevant social science disciplines such as political science, economics, and law in governance analyses. In addition, according to the authors, researchers do not use the results from diﬀerent disciplines in their work. Transdisciplinary approaches are necessary to implement nexus governance since it encompasses decision-making through horizontal relations, that is, bottom-up approaches, rather than vertical top-down ones (Stirling 2015; Kurian and Ardakanian 2015; Howarth and Monasterolo 2016; Artioli, 2017). 7. Final remarks The innovative character of this research is to approach the governance of the nexus from diﬀerent and complementary methodologies – SLR, SNA, and DA. In agreement with Stirling (2015), there are no ideal methods for nexus-related challenges, but a requirement for methodological pluralism. This choice helped in addressing the initial questions, as it brought to the nexus governance debate a more in-depth look at articles related to this topic. Based on the ﬁrst question (what governance concepts constitute nexus literature?), we have found twenty-four diﬀerent concepts related to governance, elucidating a diversity of approaches. They were placed in Table 4 from approximations taken from the qualitative methodology. These concepts were mobilized to add to the governance of the nexus and to provide a base for reconsideration, in the future. The main themes of this literature can be categorized into eight groups: i) water centrism; ii) systems; iii) policy integration; iv) sustainable development v) environmental governance; vi) social- economics and management; vii) resource security; and viii) climate change. Similarly, as shown in Figure 4, the related concepts were also grouped into eight: water and basin governance; environmental and systems governance; risk and resource security govern- ance; economic governance; global governance; urban governance; integrative and cooperative governance; and “epistemic” and transdisciplinary governance. And we also found three gaps in this literature: 1) a lack of theoretical approaches that deﬁne the JOURNAL OF INTEGRATIVE ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES 39 concept of nexus governance more densely, 2) the necessity to enhance focus on participatory approaches, and 3) a lack of critical analysis of the WEF nexus perspective. This paper ends with tree ﬁnal suggestions. First, it must be assumed that the concept of nexus governance cannot be universally applicable. This means that each context of analysis will have its own governance arrangements for water, energy and food. Second, it is necessary to recognize the diverse conceptual basis on which the concept has been approached. Exactly for this reason, it is a very open concept, based on diﬀerent points of view and friendly to transdisciplinary approaches. Third, in our opinion, the WEF nexus approach is important in mitigating inequities, and thus, nexus governance must have strong inclusive characteristics to advocate the participation of several stakeholders including the most disadvantaged in the nexus. Here, participatory approaches can enhance the trans-disciplinary perspective for the nexus, and research or evaluation should incorporate those often left outside formal processes of policy research (Stirling 2015). Sometimes, more participation means more complexity; however, this complexity seems necessary in facing contemporary environmental problems. Some questions may be asked for future studies: Under what circumstances can we have more inclusive governance processes? What are the possibilities for marginalized actors in decision- making processes to decide which integrations matter? How can these actors become not only consumers but also agents of change? Understanding the diversity of approaches and methods analysed here can be an important lesson not only for the nexus debate but also for governance processes. Notwithstanding, given that the literature on nexus governance is focused on the issue of water, it is important to consider the need for more horizontal analysis on resources. This horizontality may also be important in understanding that no scale is more important than the other. The trans-scalar nature of the nexus is an essential characteristic in under- standing that no scale becomes suﬃcient, putting diﬀerent angles in perspective, and viable interactions will always be the object of political decisions. Particularly in relation to the concept of nexus governance, it should be noted that the debate has reshaped other concepts related to governance within the debate on water, energy and food. But there is still a long way to go to make this concept more robust. There is a need for articles that theoretically contribute to the concept of nexus governance in a more critical way. These may be alternatives to ensure that the concept does not remain restricted to scientiﬁc debate, but inﬂuences decision-making processes around the planet. Acknowledgments Special thanks to the São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP), the University of São Paulo through the School of Public Health, the University of Sussex (through Science Policy Research Unit), and the Wageningen University for the partnership. This paper is part of the doctoral study Resilience and sustainability nexus in metropolitan contexts: intersectoral synergies from public policies (FAPESP – proc. n. 2016/25375-5). It is also part of the international project Resilience and vulnerability at the urban nexus of food, water, energy and the environment (ResNexus) (FAPESP – proc. n. 2015/50132-6), a partnership between University of São Paulo/Brazil, University of Sussex/UK/ESRC, and Wageningen University/the Netherlands/NWO. Leandro Giatti also thanks to the National Council for Scientiﬁc and Technological Development (CNPq – proc. n. 309840/2018-0). Lira Luz Benites-Lazaro acknowledges ﬁnancial support received from FAPESP Process: 2017/17796-3, Brazil. Carolina Monteiro de Carvalho acknowledges ﬁnancial support received from FAPESP, Process: 2015/21311-3, Brazil. 40 A. M. URBINATTI ET AL. Disclosure statement No potential conﬂict of interest was reported by the authors. Funding This work was supported by the Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo [2015/ 50132-6, 2016/25375-5, 2017/17796-3, 2015/21311-3]. Leandro Luiz Giatti also thanks to the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Cientíﬁco e Tecnológico [309840/2018-0]. ORCID Alberto Matenhauer Urbinatti http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8257-0167 Lira Luz Benites-Lazaro http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6587-1497 Carolina Monteiro de Carvalho http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1023-0489 Leandro Luiz Giatti http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1154-6503 References Allan C, Xia J, Pahl-Wostl C. 2013. Climate change and water security: challenges for adaptive water management. Curr Opin Environ Sustain. 5(6):625–632. doi:10.1016/j.cosust.2013.09.004. Allouche J, Middleton C, Gyawali D. 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Journal

Journal of Integrative Environmental Sciences – Taylor & Francis

Published: Dec 22, 2020

Keywords: Water-energy-food nexus; nexus governance; social network analysis; discourse analysis; systematic literature review

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The conceptual basis of water-energy-food nexus governance: systematic literature review using network and discourse analysis

The conceptual basis of water-energy-food nexus governance: systematic literature review using network and discourse analysis

Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

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The conceptual basis of water-energy-food nexus governance: systematic literature review using network and discourse analysis

The conceptual basis of water-energy-food nexus governance: systematic literature review using network and discourse analysis

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