for the Rio+20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development

This statement reflects a collective opinion of the UN-Water Members and comprises recommendations to the participants of the UNCSD 2012 as well as a list of potential actions in support of green economic approaches.

This report, based on an analysis of data from more than 130 countries, looks at the issues that pertain to the management, development and use of fresh water resources. Its starting point is in the Earth Summit’s Agenda 21 recommendation for an integrated approach to the management of water resources. It is intended to inform decision-making at the Rio+20 conference and follow-up global policy discourses. It will facilitate information exchange to enhance the coherence and impact of national efforts to improve water resources management and related work of the UN and other external support agencies at country level.

Collecting inputs for the Bonn2011 Nexus Conference preparatory process

The question of how to effectively use our water resources has been debated for decades, yet what we need more than ever is direct action at the field level.

A message from Felix Dodds, Executive Director of the Stakeholder Forum for a Sustainable Future and International Steering Committee (ISC) Member

Forty five influential CEOs commit to lobbying for political change to stave off water crisis – It’s not often that you get 45 of the world’s most powerful CEOs calling on governments to push up the price of a key resource. But this is exactly what happened today when companies ranging from Coca Cola, Nestle, Glaxo SmithKline, Merck and Bayer signed a special communiqué at the Rio+20 conference on sustainable development highlighting the urgency of the global water crisis and calling on governments to step up their efforts and to work more actively with the private sector, civil society and other stakeholders to address it.

Water, energy and land are headline issues in the run-up to Rio+20. The 2012 European Report on Development (ERD), which has its UK launch at DFID on 11 June, and a launch in Berlin on 14 June, puts the knotty problem of increasing scarcity and interconnections between these resources centre-stage: the Water, Energy and Land (WEL) nexus. There are still hopes that outcomes from Rio will bridge between environmental and developmental agendas, for example by agreeing a mandate to set Sustainable Development Goals. Such big ideas will need to be backed up by other radical rethinks in the way we approach our environment, societies and economies.

Environment secretary says it’s time to shatter the myth that you can’t be green and growing – The clouds may be gathering around the Rio +20 Earth Summit next week with walkouts marring last-minute talks, the negotiating text remaining a mess of brackets and clauses, commentators convinced the summit will end as a damp squib, and the row over David Cameron’s refusal to attend refusing to die down.

The Water-energy-food nexus (or other permutations) is increasingly finding itself in the public discourse surrounding development and sustainability. It is a concept that is easy to understand on the face of things, yet like a ball of wool unravels itself into a myriad of complex and dynamic relationships. In fact some have long studied some of the components in detail, such as water use for agriculture and use of crops for bioenergy. And yet despite the fact that these three resources are amongst the most important resources for human survival, the attention they have received as a single interdependent issue has been inadequate. – This is of interest to me in particular because my research is based around the water-energy nexus. Indeed, there is an aspect of food/agriculture in there too, which would be more prominent if the UK aimed to source all of its food from the UK … I digress.

The ‘nexus’ has become a popular buzz word to describe the complex linkages among water, energy and food security – sectors that have traditionally remained fairly separate. Talk of the water-energy-food nexus was a hot topic at last month’s Planet Under Pressure conference; it is also the focus of a significant German government-organised input to the UN Rio+20 Summit. What has brought nexus thinking to the fore, and what does this nexus look like? How does it relate to climate compatible development?