Governing the Nexus for Sustainability

This report summarizes the challenges of and requirements for effective governance of the water, energy and food nexus. With global dynamics such as climate change, urbanization and changing consumption patterns, governing resources in a coherent manner becomes both more complex and more relevant for sustainable development. Governance challenges include nexus economics (costs and benefits of different approaches to resource management), institutional design (like questions of how decision-making should be best distributed) and good governance (how to make sure that nexus governance adheres to certain agreed upon principles and values). In terms of economics, a balance between sector specific actions and nexus governance is required. For effective decision-making it is important that power among different institutions is both distributed and coordinated. Good nexus governance requires targets that can be monitored to make sure that basic principles are followed and to examine whether progress toward sustainable development is being made.