15 may 2017
Research // Regulating the water-energy-food nexus: Interdependencies, transaction costs and procedural justice
By Shaun Larcom and Terry van Gevelt. There have been calls for an overhaul of regulatory and governance frameworks to incorporate the implications of the water-energy-food nexus. The authors map one small component of the regulatory space of the nexus and highlight its immense complexity, drawing on insights from the economics and socio-legal literatures to show that a decentralised approach to regulation based upon procedural justice can enable the trade-offs of the nexus to be considered and addressed.
The authors use a nexus case study of micro hydro-electricity generation in Dartmoor National Park in England to show that when taking into account interactions between state and non-state regulation, the economic concepts of interdependencies and transaction costs, and a recognition that regulation of the nexus is a process involving decisions of procedural justice, some existing regulatory frameworks are already well-equipped to deal with the implications of nexus analysis.