Governing the Water-Energy-Food Nexus // Opportunities for Basin Organisations
By: Eric Hoa (UNEP), Eline Boelee, Jan Cools, Tony Zamparutti, Sandra Planes, Guillermo Hernandez, Thomas Chiramba, Youngseok Lee, Annie Von Burg. Good governance of the water-energy-food nexus can improve energy, water and food security, foster synergies, manage trade-offs, support sustainable development and maintain ecosystem services. Basin Organizations (BOs) have a key role to play in governance of the nexus to address challenges of sustainable hydropower, balancing the production of bioenergy with food production and taking into account the energy needs of water.
Learning from many examples of BOs implementing IWRM, and some additional experiences in the nexus approach, four main recommendations have been formulated to support governance of the nexus by BOs. These recommendations are: 1) BOs need to have a high level mandate to coordinate and cooperate between the water, energy, food and environment sectors; 2) Build partnerships across sectors and levels and with the private sector; 3) Identify mutual benefits, coordinate planning and jointly implementation common solutions; 6) Capacity building on the knowledge base, analytical tools and institutional development.
This publication was published as a discussion paper for the First International Environment Forum for Basin Organizations Towards Sustainable Freshwater Governance, 26-28 November 2014, Nairobi, Kenya.
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Published
November 2014