Sustainable WEF Nexus Management : A Conceptual Framework to Integrate Models of Social, Economic, Policy, and Institutional Developments

Funding Information: This work was supported by the Decision Analytic Framework to explore the water-energy-food nexus in complex transboundary water resource systems of fast developing countries (DAFNE) project, which has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant Agreement No. 690268.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Transformation in governance towards resilient food systems

The dynamics of systemic societal transformations are not well understood, and the extent to which such transformations can be governed is contested. This research paper is the result of a joint effort among a small group of researchers to identify pathways for transformation towards sustainable food systems, which are resilient towards shocks and towards climate change in particular. Using empirical studies, both transformations in governance systems and governance of transformations were investigated. These cases served as a preliminary analysis to identify some of the trends and patterns that warrant further investigation. Not surprisingly, transformational change in food systems is often triggered by a shock to the system, or by increasing pressure to that system. But that alone is not enough to bring about a transformation. A number of preconditions and conditions need to be present including sufficient ‘wealth’ or economic and social capital in the system with resources that can be mobilized, and sufficient flexibility in the institutional context to allow innovation to emerge and gain strength. A particular area of interest that appears to stimulate transformations is collective action, which often involves collaboration across geographical scales and interest groups. The outcomes of transformations are complex and typically multifaceted, and can take years to emerge. However, broadly speaking, the cases explored demonstrate that governance is central to food system transformation both in terms of pre-conditions and provoking processes as well as in the outcomes of the transformation itself. Food system transformations in general appear to entail fundamental shifts in social relations and institutions – in other words, the governance of the food system

Ein neuer Gesellschaftsvertrag für eine nachhaltige Landwirtschaft

Die Landwirtschaft in Deutschland, Europa und weltweit befindet sich in einem dramatischen Umbruchprozess. Einerseits bieten Liberalisierung und Marktöffnung, neue technologische Entwicklungen, die wachsende Weltbevölkerung und neue Kundenwünsche vielen landwirtschaftlichen Betrieben neue Möglichkeiten. Andererseits stehen viele Landwirtinnen und Landwirte in internationaler Konkurrenz, sind zum betrieblichen Wachstum mit hohem Investitionsrisiko gezwungen, sind Teil strikt regulierter Wertschöpfungsketten und müssen steigenden gesellschaftlichen Ansprüchen genügen. Zugleich machen sich viele Menschen Sorgen, dass die Prozesse der Rationalisierung und Modernisierung der landwirtschaftlichen Produktion auf Kosten von Natur-, Umwelt- und Tierschutz gehen. Auf vielen Ebenen wird daher bereits nach einer neuen Verständigung darüber gesucht, was die Gesellschaft von der Landwirtschaft erwartet, und welche Unterstützung die Landwirtinnen und Landwirte im Gegenzug dafür erwarten dürfen. Vor diesem Hintergrund entwickelt das vorliegende Open Access-Buch eine wissenschaftlich fundierte Kritik der Umweltauswirkungen der Landwirtschaft und der politischen Logik der Agrarpolitik. Es präsentiert ein neues Leitbild mit konkreten Indikatoren sowie alternative strategische Handlungsoptionen. Die umfassende Analyse wird zu einem Vorschlag für eine neue Architektur der europäischen Agrarpolitik gebündelt, die eine breite Diskussion um einen Neuen Gesellschaftsvertrag für die Landwirtschaft in Deutschland und Europa anstoßen soll

Ein neuer Gesellschaftsvertrag für eine nachhaltige Landwirtschaft

Die Landwirtschaft in Deutschland, Europa und weltweit befindet sich in einem dramatischen Umbruchprozess. Einerseits bieten Liberalisierung und Marktöffnung, neue technologische Entwicklungen, die wachsende Weltbevölkerung und neue Kundenwünsche vielen landwirtschaftlichen Betrieben neue Möglichkeiten. Andererseits stehen viele Landwirtinnen und Landwirte in internationaler Konkurrenz, sind zum betrieblichen Wachstum mit hohem Investitionsrisiko gezwungen, sind Teil strikt regulierter Wertschöpfungsketten und müssen steigenden gesellschaftlichen Ansprüchen genügen. Zugleich machen sich viele Menschen Sorgen, dass die Prozesse der Rationalisierung und Modernisierung der landwirtschaftlichen Produktion auf Kosten von Natur-, Umwelt- und Tierschutz gehen. Auf vielen Ebenen wird daher bereits nach einer neuen Verständigung darüber gesucht, was die Gesellschaft von der Landwirtschaft erwartet, und welche Unterstützung die Landwirtinnen und Landwirte im Gegenzug dafür erwarten dürfen. Vor diesem Hintergrund entwickelt das vorliegende Open Access-Buch eine wissenschaftlich fundierte Kritik der Umweltauswirkungen der Landwirtschaft und der politischen Logik der Agrarpolitik. Es präsentiert ein neues Leitbild mit konkreten Indikatoren sowie alternative strategische Handlungsoptionen. Die umfassende Analyse wird zu einem Vorschlag für eine neue Architektur der europäischen Agrarpolitik gebündelt, die eine breite Diskussion um einen Neuen Gesellschaftsvertrag für die Landwirtschaft in Deutschland und Europa anstoßen soll

Advancing the research agenda on food systems governance and transformation

The food systems upon which humanity depends face multiple interdependent environmental, social and economic threats in the 21st Century. Yet, the governance of these systems, which determines to a large extent the ability to adapt and transform in response to these challenges, is underresearched. This perspective piece synthesises the findings of two recent reviews of food systems governance and transformations and proposes a comprehensive research agenda for the coming years. These reviews highlight the influence of governance on food systems, methodological obstacles to explaining the effectiveness of governance in realising food sustainability, and conditions that have historically supported food system transformations. We argue that the following steps are key to improving our knowledge of the role of governance in food systems: (1) developing more comparable research designs for building generalisable explanations of the governance elements that are most effective in realising food systems goals; (2) using the lens of polycentricity to help disentangle complex governance networks; (3) giving greater attention to the conditions and pre-conditions associated with historical food system transformations; (4) identifying adaptations that strengthen or weaken path dependency; and, (5) focusing research on how transformations can be supported by institutions that facilitate collective action and stakeholder agency

Narratives underlying research in African river basin management

River modifications through hydropower dams and other infrastructure have far-reaching economic, ecological and social effects that are viewed in highly contrasting ways depending on underlying narratives. As part of a Euro-African research consortium funded by the European Commission we studied pathways for sustainable river basin management in the Omo-Turkana basins in Ethiopia and Kenya. Based on a literature review, stakeholder workshops, targeted interviews and considering our own positionality, we identified underlying narratives related to (a) economic transformation and modernization, (b) indigenous rights and (c) nature conservation, which were all connected through water, energy, food and ecosystems within a (d) landscape nexus. Yet, we also identified a (e) living museum narrative suggesting that international advocacy for indigenous rights and nature conservation is a means through which Western societies want to preserve African societies in an "undeveloped" state. National governments use this narrative to silence external critique, while the tourism industry promotes it to advertise visits to pastoralist tribes. This narrative reveals powerful, yet largely ignored hindrances for collaborative projects resulting from cultural and historical biases in Euro-African collaborations. Based on our analysis, we argue that international research projects in sustainability sciences need to increase the transparency of open and hidden narratives that influence research directions and power relationships between scientific partners, also those using mostly technically-driven approaches. We emphasize that African landscapes are not to be viewed as living museums, and collaborative research should be based on fairness, respect, care, and honesty to allow for multiple narratives that underlie research.ISSN:1862-4065ISSN:1862-405

Top terms of polynomial traces in Kra's plumbing construction

Let Sigma be a surface of negative Euler characteristic together with a pants decomposition P. Kra's plumbing construction endows Sigma with a projective structure as follows. Replace each pair of pants by a triply punctured sphere and glue, or "plumb", adjacent pants by gluing punctured disk neighbourhoods of the punctures. The gluing across the i -th pants curve is defined by a complex parameter tau(i) is an element of C. The associated holonomy representation rho: pi(1) (Sigma) -> PSL(2, C) gives a projective structure on Sigma which depends holomorphically on the tau(i). In particular, the traces of all elements rho(gamma), gamma is an element of pi(1)(Sigma) are polynomials in the tau(i). Generalising results proved by Keen and the second author [4; 13] for the once and twice punctured torus respectively, we prove a formula giving a simple linear relationship between the coefficients of the top terms of rho(gamma), as polynomials in the tau(i), and the Dehn-Thurston coordinates of gamma relative to P. This will be applied in a later paper [7] by the first author to give a formula for the asymptotic directions of pleating rays in the Maskit embedding of Sigma as the bending measure tends to zero