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

Water, energy, food - these three issues are the essential holy trinity of environmental sustainability. They are maddeningly intertwined and their effect reaches everyone – private, public, and social sectors alike. Because everyone is affected by each of these issues, and because they are so intertwined, everyone needs to be at the table. No one entity, no matter how large, can save us from ourselves.

Agriculture and a focus on land and soil should be central to both this year’s UNFCCC climate talks and the Earth Summit in June.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have become a contentious proposal among Member States that are currently negotiating the outcome document for Rio+20. Member States and the international community are looking for the successors of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which will expire in 2015. The current framework helped the international community to rally behind a common understanding of poverty eradication, and it provided targets and indicators to guide policy decisions. However, the MDGs overemphasised economic poverty and gave limited attention to the structural causes of poverty or to sustainable development.

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.

Governments are set to weaken pledges on boosting access to water and energy after a new draft negotiating text was issued at the Rio+20 meeting. The text was issued by the Brazilian host government after it assumed leadership of the talks from the UN. It affirms that nations must not slide back on prior pledges and names ending poverty as the “greatest challenge”.