by EDF Group, Thai and Lao Governments

by the Ministry of Energy and Mines (Laos), TheunHinboun Power Company, Statkraft Oslo, Electrcité du Laos, and GMS Lao Company Ltd.

by Niger Basin Authority (NBA) and the Government of Mali

by the Global Environment Facility (GEF)

by Stuart Orr, WWF International

by Ramón Llamas and Maite Aldaya, Consultants, UNEP, Water Observatory - Botin Foundation

West African countries are planning to construct new large dams in order to meet their energy and water needs and to promote food security against an uncertain backdrop of climate change. If these new dams are to offer development opportunities for all and avoid social conflict over land and water management then lessons need to be learned from past projects.

Message from the International Conference on Transboundary River Basin Management, Phuket, 1-3 May 2012

Nature is the unseen dimension of the nexus. With its functions integral to the three securities and their inter-dependence, nature is part of the infrastructure needed to manage the nexus and its resilience. Nature helps mediate the nexus links, by storing, moving, cleaning and buffering flows of water, making drought and flood less severe, and food and energy production more reliable. Without healthy ecosystems in well-functioning watersheds, the infrastructure built for irrigation, hydropower or municipal water supply does not function sustainably, and is unlikely to achieve the economic returns necessary to justify investments.

“At the heart of the dams debate are issues of equity, governance, justice and power – issues that underlie the many intractable problems faced by humanity.”

A collection of case studies on the NEXUS presented by CGIAR’s Challenge Programm, the EDF Groupe and the World Water Council on the WWF6

“The nexus is an important process which has been started at the Bonn conference and needs to be continued by committed people at all levels in order to effect change”. — by Nicole Kranz

The SEI’s work on the water, energy and food security nexus – an interview with Holger Hoff

This Workshop will address a series of innovative frameworks that help analyse technical solutions as well as trade-offs in the water-food-energy nexus for better informed decision-making.

The 12th edition of Green Week, the biggest annual conference on European environment policy.

Recognition and understanding of the closely-bound interaction between water, energy and food production and use – the ‘nexus’ – is established in these sectors, but perhaps for many, ‘this nexus’ is still not entirely understood - by Rebecca Welling, IUCN

A major report that will help countries understand the economic value of inland wetlands, which cover a vast area of the earth’s land surface and provide key ecosystem services, was released at the conference of the Convention on Biological Diversity here on Tuesday. The message ofthe report is simply, “drain it, lose it.” Inland wetlands cover at least 9.5 million sq km of the earth’s surface, and together with coastal wetlands, 12.8 million sq km. Restoration of this particular type of ecosystem is the most expensive. These water bodies provide clean water for drinking and agriculture, cooling water for the energy sector; they also regulate floods. Agriculture, fisheries and tourism sectors depend heavily on the health of wetlands.

By Stuart Orr, Freshwater Manager, WWF International, and David Grant, Senior Manager: Water Risk and Partnerships, SABMiller

The increasingly joined up thinking towards tackling water, energy and food challenges is apparent but more is needed to build advocacy among civil society, writes Rebecca Tharme

In its RIO+20 Call-to-action, CGIAR called for “adopting cross-sectoral approaches which facilitate broader partnerships, coordinated regulatory frameworks and appropriate economic incentives. We need the vision and courage to transcend conventional sectoral approaches and apply integrated thinking to the management of agriculture, aquaculture, livestock, forests and water.” AlertNET wanted to find out more, and talked to Stephen Hall (Director General, WorldFish Center), Papa Seck (Director General, Africa Rice Center), Tony Simons (Director General, World Agroforestry Centre), Alain Vidal (Director, Challenge Program on Water and Food – CPWF), Amy Duchelle (Research Fellow, Center for International Forestry Research - CIFOR) and from the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture - IITA), we have Peter Neuenschwander (Scientist Emeritus) and Piet van Asten (Systems Agronomist).

Richard Matthews on the Messages of WWF’s Living Planet Report – The WWF’s Living Planet Report (LPR) is the world’s leading science-based analysis on the health of the Earth and the impact of human activity. The ninth biennial publication released in May, reviews the cumulative pressures humans are putting on the planet and the consequent decline in the health of the forests, rivers and oceans. Its key finding is that humanity’s demands are exceeding the planet’s capacity to sustain us.

No resource is more fundamental than water to the health and security of people and the environment. Yet the alarm bells are ringing as this finite, yet essential, natural resource comes under increasing pressure from growing demand, poor management and climate change creating a growing global water challenge. With Rio+20 on the immediate horizon, and a focus on water, energy and food, water will be an issue that world and business leaders are likely to find absorbed into their agendas - and rightly so. Water scarcity and stress is not only an issue of protecting ecosystem and biodiversity, but is also presents a real and present risk to local communities, business and world economies.

Hunderttausenden Menschen droht eine ökologische Katastrophe: Ein gigantischer äthiopischer Staudamm könnte dazu führen, dass der Turkana-See in Kenia noch weiter austrocknet. Die Region gilt jetzt schon als eine der gewalttätigsten Afrikas - die Konflikte würden sich weiter verschärfen.

Tens of millions of new jobs can be created around the world in the next two decades if green policies are put in place to switch the high-carbon economy to low-carbon, the UN has said.

The United Nations has issued the first-ever set of guidelines that addresses the displacement of people or their livelihoods in deals made by their governments to lease or sell large areas of land. The Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security, issued this month by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), is a first step toward defining and improving recognition of land, water, forest and fishery rights of people, many of them indigenous and poor, affected by land deals.

In December the Mekong River Commission (MRC), an intergovernmental body made up of Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam, called again for approval of a potentially devastating dam at Xayaburi in northern Laos to be withheld until more is known about its effect on the lower Mekong. But now CH. Karnchang, a Thai construction giant contracted to build a $3.8 billion dam at Xayaburi has told the Bangkok Stock Exchange that dam construction officially began on March 15th, and that 5,000 workers have just been hired.

Dams on tributaries worse for fish than those on the main river