Water-energy-food-ecosystem nexus governance: methodological aspects of the assessement of supportive and restrictive contexts

Managing water resources in a sustainable way means, a fortiori in the context of increasingly visible climate change impacts, taking into account decisions made by other sectors having a significant effect on the availability and quality of water. Water quality and quantity are often affected by the energy sector on the one hand, and agriculture and food production on the other. Moreover, ecosystem requirements, such as minimum ecological flows or water quality, should always be considered. Thus, facing climate change impacts calls for increasing water-energy-food-ecosystems nexus considerations.

This being said, how can managers of these natural resources and stakeholders using them consider intersectoral coherence needs? Are these needs only theoretical or are they reflected by concrete actions in practice? Last but not least, how to assess the state of WEFE nexus governance in territories?

In order to address these questions, the present paper describes the methodological aspects of the WEFE nexus governance assessment tool (NXGAT) co-developed in the NEXOGENESIS project (H2020-funded). This tool assesses the state of the WEFE nexus governance in catchments. The goal of the NXGAT is to highlight what is actually supportive and what is actually restrictive to WEFE nexus governance.

The NXGAT is the first step in the WEFE nexus governance approach (Hüesker et al., 2022 ; Mooren et al., 2022) aiming at developing WEFE nexus policies. The NXGAT lays the foundation for cross-sectoral dialogue by both raising awareness and identifying solutions for more WEFE nexus governance.  The NXGAT assesses five dimensions (levels and scales; actors and networks; problem perspectives and goal ambitions; strategies and instruments; and responsibilities and resources) and five qualities (extent, coherence, flexibility, intensity of action, and fit) of the governance system. The tool is implemented in the Lielupe transboundary catchment (Lithuania-Latvia) by a team of transdisciplinary experts during face-to-face interviews. Interviewees are selected to cover the multi-scalar levels of all sectors.

The results of the implementation in the Lielupe transboundary catchment provide preliminary results on the efficiency of the method and the importance of the preparatory phases of the field investigation. The implementation of the NXGAT contributed to both underline blockages and leverages to urge for more intersectoral governance in this case study.