Research // Water Governance in a Comparative Perspective: From IWRM to a "Nexus" Approach?

By David Benson (University of Exeter), Animesh Gain (Helmholtz-Zentrum Potsdam), Josselin Rouillard (Ecologic Institute). Nexus thinking, in the form of integrating water security with agriculture, energy and climate concerns, is normatively argued to help better transition societies towards greener economies and the wider goal of sustainable development. Yet several issues emerge from the current debate surrounding this concept, namely the extent to which such conceptualisations are genuinely novel, whether they complement (or are replacing) existing environmental governance approaches and how – if deemed normatively desirable – the nexus can be enhanced in national contexts. This paper therefore reviews the burgeoning nexus literature to determine some common indicative criteria before examining its implementation in practice vis-à-vis more established integrated water resources management (IWRM) models.