Virtual Student Excursion University Flensburg // Presentation on WEF Nexus and the Nexus Regional Dialogues Programme
The Nexus Regional Dialogues (NRD) Programme has been invited to a virtual dialogue event with students of the Department of Energy and Environmental Management in Developing Countries at the Europa-Universität Flensburg in October 2022. This event offered the opportunity to present the Water-Energy-Food (WEF) Nexus approach and highlight how the programme uses the approach in their activities.
On October 20th, 2022, almost 20 Master's students from Cameroon, Colombia, Costa Rica, Egypt, Gambia, Ghana, Indonesia, Iran, Jordan, Mexico, Pakistan, El Salvador, Bangladesh and Russia met virtually with experts from GIZ to learn about different topics, share knowledge and establish contacts. For this purpose, the Global Nexus Secretariat (GNS) of the NRD Programme was asked to present practical insights into its work.
A WEF Nexus-Journey
In the presentation on "WEF Nexus | Too important to be a niche focus", the participants were guided through a common scenario to experience the challenges of the topic: the number of inhabitants of the “Global Capital Community” is growing steadily, all of them are striving for economic prosperity and this requires water, energy and food. However, the community faced at the same time global challenges such as floods, the struggle for sufficient energy and food, and water scarcity. Forecasts predicted an intensification of competition for water, energy and food security. It became clear that “business-as-usual” is no longer an option. The inhabitants of Global Capital Community asked for possible solutions to meet the challenges facing the water, energy and food sectors.
Practical Insights
At this point, the mind game (scenario) came to an end, and the Master students were shown how these challenges can be addressed through a holistic and integrated WEF Nexus approach. To illustrate this with concrete activities from practice, the Nexus Regional Dialogues Programme was briefly introduced and highlighted how the programme works to mainstream and institutionalise the WEF Nexus approach. The brief pitch of concrete implementation activities in the NRD regions, such as policy and investment dialogues or realisation of pilot projects, and from Germany through supporting activities such as communication, outreach and human capacity development offered the Master students a more detailed insight. At the end, an interactive Q&A session with the students gave the opportunity to clarify open questions and give feedback. With this it became clear once again that the WEF Nexus is too important to be a niche focus.
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- Nexus Regional Dialogues Programme // Insights from the webinar: Governing the Water-Energy-Food Nexus: A policy-science dialogue!