Abstract
Growing evidence within nexus research has highlighted the importance for sustainable governance of considering the interdependencies between water, energy, food and the environment, whereas water diplomacy has provided the necessary tools to address water conflicts of a transboundary nature. This paper therefore identifies and evaluates unrealised complementarities between nexus governance and water diplomacy, and discusses the benefits of integrating both for improved transboundary basin management. Two case studies - a wastewater treatment plant within the Jordan's nexus vision and a research project into management of the transboundary Zambezi River Basin - illustrate the identified complementarities and their contribution towards collaborative transboundary natural resources management. On one hand, the consideration of synergies and trade-offs between water, energy and food systems and beyond the river basin scale within nexus governance engages a larger diversity of stakeholders and can help realise more balanced agreements between sectors and hence complement water diplomacy goals. The enriched negotiations arising from a nexus approach can facilitate benefits-sharing in water diplomacy due to the broader exchange of experiences across several natural resources systems. Likewise, international nexus development projects involving a diverse range of sectors and stakeholders can ultimately facilitate peace building through inter-state cooperation and reduce the focus on disputed natural resources. On the other hand, water diplomacy provides tools to address complexity and capture political contexts that overcome the traditional technical and ‘most-rational-solution’ methods. With the application of joint fact finding, value creation and collaborative adaptive management, the added value includes the generation of a shared understanding that embeds politics in decision-making and promotes mutual gains. Further collaboration and on-the-ground experiences between researchers, policy makers and the private sector are needed, to acknowledge and act upon the complementarities of nexus governance and water diplomacy, with the final outcome of promoting cooperation in the management of transboundary resources.
Highlights
Worldwide there are 263 transboundary river basins, approximately 300 transboundary aquifers (UN-Water, 2018a) and 153 countries with transboundary water bodies (UN-Water, 2018b)
Nexus governance initiatives can reduce the focus on resources under conflict and provide empirical experiences that go beyond inter-state interactions alone, as we show in the Jordanian case study
Documents outlining the DAFNE project do not explicitly mention water diplomacy as its core element, we found this project in the Zambezi River Basin to be an exemplar of how water diplomacy elements can complement a nexus approach to governance (Fig. 8)
Summary
Worldwide there are 263 transboundary river basins, approximately 300 transboundary aquifers (UN-Water, 2018a) and 153 countries with transboundary water bodies (UN-Water, 2018b). Since the conception of the WEF nexus concept, the diversity of approaches e.g., Howells et al (2013); Bleischwitz et al (2018); McGrane et al (2018), has led to the deduction that the notion of a nexus can be represented as a ‘system-of-systems’ that interlinks economic, environmental and social systems (Little et al, 2016) Such a nexus approach could be defined as a systematic process for both analysis and policy-making to unpack the interdependencies between water, energy, food and other linked systems (Keskinen et al 2016), with the final aim of promoting cross-sectoral integration, sustainability, synergies and resource use efficiency (Pahl-Wostl, 2017). Water diplomacy practices can promote cross-sectoral collaboration, regional economic development and contribute towards improved transboundary natural resources management
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