Project // Moving Towards Adaptive Governance in Complexity: Informing Nexus Security (MAGICNEXUS)

In the third millennium, the shift from an “empty world” to a “full and globalized world” is reaching its maximum speed and this generates new challenges for the governance of sustainability. Conventional solutions such as re-adjusting the mix of production factors – substituting a less limited resource to compensate for a shortage of another, or externalization of the problem to someone else by taking full advantage of presently favourable terms of trade, may become unsustainable in the long run.

Implementing policies involving the Nexus between water, food, energy and land use calls for an urgent overhaul of the existing theoretic and analytic tool-kits. The goal of MAGIC is to transform Nexus from a shorthand to signify the complexity of the relationship between water, soils energy and climate into a set of relationship over identified factors which can be systematically used to explore this complexity. This implies integrating into the analysis social challenges and stakeholders perceptions related to the climate-water-food-energy nexus.

Dialogue spaces will be opened, dissemination strategies enacted and mixed qualitative-quantitative tools developed in the context of a community building exercise transcending mechanistic scientist-policy maker separation but taking full advantage of the rich spectrum of actors and institutions active in the Nexus.

Objectives

Under the coordination of the Autonomous University of Barcelona, the MAGIC project will pursue the above-mentioned strategy with the following concrete objectives:

1. Structuring the perception (qualitative) and representation (quantitative) of the nexus using an approach called Quantitative Story-Telling, i.e. the construction and the verification of the narratives used to study and assess the nexus.
2. Carrying-out in the context of EU policies relevant to the Nexus: (i) a diagnosis of the state-of-the play – where are we now?; (ii) a simulation of the options space – where could we go from here?
3. To create and maintain a Nexus Dialogue Space considered as an essential infrastructure for the definition, operationalization and governance of the Nexus. A good example of what can be achieved by open consultation concerns the case of GMO.
4. To create a Nexus Information Space (NIS). The NIS is a geo-referenced visualization tool embedding the complex information related to the Nexus. It makes it possible to establish a connection between the different metrics used to storage data about water, food, agriculture, energy or climate, among others.
5. To carry out a quality check on policy narratives referring to the nexus. Quantitative Story-Telling uses the results expected by the chosen policy to check whether these results are feasible, viable and desirable in relation to the nexus.
6. To carry out a quality check on the process of assessment of innovations referring to the nexus. Also in this case, the QST will be applied to check the feasibility, viability and desirability in relation to the nexus of a large scale application of innovations. Here different case studies will be used in relation to five innovations relevant for the nexus: (i) biofuel production, (ii) fracking, (iii) GMOs, (iv) tradable permits, and (v) desalination.
7. To create a Nexus Knowledge Hub for enhancing the dissemination of the results and guaranteeing a long lasting legacy to the results of the project.

Work Packages

• WP1: Management
  WP1 covers the set of activities for scientific and administrative coordination as well as the communication among the various work packages.
• WP2: Nexus Dialogue Space
  WP2 establishes and manages a Nexus Dialogue Space. This space will be used during the entire duration of the project to involve social actors in the generation and use of quantitative information to be used for governance.
• WP3: Nexus Information Space
  WP3 designs and implements the Nexus Information Space (NIS). The goal is to use the experience matured in MAGIC to develop a tool-kit integrating different quantitative methodologies supported by the required databases. This tool-kit will be used and tested in WP4, WP5 and WP6 to generate the information input required by the Quantitative Story-Telling chosen by the different teams.
• WP4: Nexus Structuring Space
  WP4 defines and develops a Quantitative Story-Telling (QST) about nexus security. This WP will first define the general framework for the analysis of the nexus and the ten topical teams working together will discuss how to define feasibility, viability and desirability in relation to a first state-of-the-play analysis (The deriving common understanding of the implications of the nexus and the possibility use of QST to check the quality of narratives will be used by the different topical teams (policy teams and innovation teams) in WP5 and in WP6.
• WP5: Quality Check of Policy Narratives
  WP5 tests the robustness of narratives about sustainability as reflected by EU directives in relation to different management strategies. This WP studies the degree and nature of change that would be required for the policy narratives to be coherent with EU sustainability goals at the pan-European level. This result will be achieved by integrating analysis of five themes carried out by five different mixed teams: (i) directive on water (WFD); (ii) directive on food (CAP); (iii) directive on energy; (iv) directive on biodiversity protection; (v) the new strategy on circular economy.
• WP6: Quality Check of Innovation Narratives
  WP6 provides a quality check on the process of assessment of technological innovations or specific policy solutions in relation to the issue of the nexus. Also in this case five innovation teams will deal with five innovations very relevant for the nexus – biofuels, GMOs, fracking, tradable permits, and desalination – following the approach of Quantitative-Story Telling.
• WP7: Nexus Knowledge Hub
  WP7 develops and manages a Nexus Knowledge Hub that will be used for Dissemination. It is formed by the activities of outreach, maintenance of the online tool, publications, training series and management of the open access outputs.

Consortium

• Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona
• The James Hutton Institute
• Wageningen University
• University of Twente
• Universitetet i Bergen
• DG Joint Research Centre
• Universita Degli Studi di Napoli Federico II
• Climate Analytics GmbH
• Instituto Tecnologico de Canarias, S.A.
• Yale University

More information

• Project website

Interview

Nexus Interview // Dr. Mario Giampietro of the Autonomous University of Barcelona (MAGIC Project)