29 Aug 2017
Community of Practice // Building a WEF Nexus Community of Practice (NCoP)
By David W. Smith, Matthew Welch, Katrina E. Bennett, Jon Padgham, Rabi Mohtar. There are several challenges in building and maintaining a sustainable water-energy-food nexus community of practice. Perhaps, the most difficult to overcome is the lack of a clear definition, meaning, and identity of the “water-energy-food nexus.” While international collaboration among researchers will provide critical perspective and insight for addressing similar challenges on a more localized basis, the variation in regional jurisdiction and political realities could restrict international collaborative research and implementation of potential solutions.
The purposes of this paper are to examine the literature for common threads and attributes inherent to scientific-based communities of practice, and to identify challenges and potential solutions for building a community of scientists to address the water-energy-food nexus.
The latest research suggests several guiding principles to build and maintain a successful scientific community of practice. These include the following: identifying a shared conceptual vision that is clear in purpose, but also provides for evolution and growth; providing for both internal and external perspectives as well as various levels of participation among members; and facilitating collaboration that satisfies personal and professional motivations.