Loughborough University
Browse

Engaging stakeholders in research to address water-energy-food (WEF) nexus challenges

Download (880.09 kB)
journal contribution
posted on 2018-04-26, 08:43 authored by Claire Hoolohan, Alice Larkin, C. McLachlan, R. Falconer, I. Soutar, J. Suckling, L. Varga, I. Haltas, Angela Druckman, D. Lumbroso, Marion Scott, Daniel Gilmour, R. Ledbetter, S. McGrane, C. Mitchell, Dapeng YuDapeng Yu
The water–energy–food (WEF) nexus has become a popular, and potentially powerful, frame through which to analyse interactions and interdependencies between these three systems. Though the case for transdisciplinary research in this space has been made, the extent of stakeholder engagement in research remains limited with stakeholders most commonly incorporated in research as end-users. Yet, stakeholders interact with nexus issues in a variety of ways, consequently there is much that collaboration might offer to develop nexus research and enhance its application. This paper outlines four aspects of nexus research and considers the value and potential challenges for transdisciplinary research in each. We focus on assessing and visualising nexus systems; understanding governance and capacity building; the importance of scale; and the implications of future change. The paper then proceeds to describe a novel mixed-method study that deeply integrates stakeholder knowledge with insights from multiple disciplines. We argue that mixed-method research designs—in this case orientated around a number of cases studies—are best suited to understanding and addressing real-world nexus challenges, with their inevitable complex, non-linear system characteristics. Moreover, integrating multiple forms of knowledge in the manner described in this paper enables research to assess the potential for, and processes of, scaling-up innovations in the nexus space, to contribute insights to policy and decision making.

Funding

This research was conducted with funding support Engineering and Physical Science Research Council (EPSRC) [Research Grant EP/N00583X/1].

History

School

  • Social Sciences

Department

  • Geography and Environment

Published in

Sustainability Science

Citation

HOOLOHAN, C. ...et al., 2018. Engaging stakeholders in research to address water-energy-food (WEF) nexus challenges. Sustainability Science, 13(5), pp. 1415–1426.

Publisher

© The Authors. Published by Springer Verlag

Version

  • VoR (Version of Record)

Publisher statement

This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/

Acceptance date

2018-03-15

Publication date

2018-04-04

Notes

This is an Open Access Article. It is published by Springer under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported Licence (CC BY). Full details of this licence are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

ISSN

1862-4057

Language

  • en

Usage metrics

    Loughborough Publications

    Licence

    Exports

    RefWorks
    BibTeX
    Ref. manager
    Endnote
    DataCite
    NLM
    DC