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Despite the known benefits of integrated policy and planning, traditional governance decisions in the food-energy-water (FEW) nexus are often made without cross-sector collaboration, potentially leading to unintended consequences and decreased resource security. Applying collaborative governance approaches to the FEW nexus provides an opportunity to shift towards integrated policy of food, energy, and water governance; doing so first requires an understanding of the limitations of current governance structures and the opportunities for change. We conduct a social network analysis of stakeholders in Phoenix, AZ using secondary data sources to construct the social network of collaboration and to analyze the ability of the governance landscape to facilitate or hinder collaborative governance. The social network measures indicate potential challenges to collaborative governance of FEW nexus stakeholders, such as limited trust between actors. However, leveraging bridging actors provides opportunities to increase collaborative governance between sectors. This research is important for implementing collaborative FEW nexus governance in practice. 

Rapid growth in the food-energy-water (FEW) nexus literature calls for an assessment of the trajectory and impacts of this scholarship to identify key themes and future research directions. In this paper, we report on a bibliometric analysis of this literature that focuses on (1) examining publication trends and geographic focus of research, (2) identifying research hotspots and emerging themes, (3) assessing the integrated nature of research, and (4) reflecting on major developments and ways forward. We used Elsevier’s SCOPUS database to search for publications from January 2011 to May 2018 on the FEW nexus, and analyzed the final sample of 257 publications using BibExcel and Vosviewer software tools. The analysis showed steady growth in publications since 2011 with a sharp upturn in 2015 and 2016, coinciding with major funding calls. Thematic analysis of abstracts revealed a strong focus on quantitative resource interlinkages with limited attention to qualitative institutional capacities and intersectoral governance challenges. Term co-occurrence network map showed the term “investment” connected with a large number of frequently cited terms, while the term “governance” demonstrated much weaker links. We reflect on how these findings may help us better understand and address the enduring challenge of transitioning from nexus thinking to action. 

This paper examines the effect of having a third-party scientific expert present in stakeholder interviews. The study was conducted as part of a larger project on stakeholder engagement for natural resource management in the Verde Valley region of Arizona. We employed an experimental design, conducting stakeholder interviews both with and without an identified scientific expert present. Our sample consisted of 12 pairs of interviewees (24 total participants) who we matched based on their occupation, sex, and spatial proximity. For each pair, the scientific expert was present as a third party in one interview and absent in the other. We used a word-based coding strategy to code all interview responses for three known areas of sensitivity among the study population (risk, gatekeeping, and competence). We then performed both quantitative and qualitative analyses to compare responses across the two interview groups. We found that the presence of a scientific expert did not have a statistically significant effect on the mention of sensitive topics among stakeholders. However, our qualitative results show that the presence of a scientific expert had subtle influences on the ways that stakeholders discussed sensitive topics, particularly in placing emphasis on their own credibility and knowledge. Our findings indicate that researchers may be able to pursue collaborative, interdisciplinary research designs with multiple researchers present during interviews without concerns of strongly influencing data elicitation on sensitive topics. However, researchers should be cognizant of the subtle ways in which the presence of a third-party expert may influence the credibility claims and knowledge assertions made by respondents when a third-party expert is present during stakeholder interviews.

 

Water, energy, and food are all essential components of human societies. Collectively, their respective resource systems are interconnected in what is called the “nexus”. There is growing consensus that a holistic understanding of the interdependencies and trade-offs between these sectors and other related systems is critical to solving many of the global challenges they present. While nexus research has grown exponentially since 2011, there is no unified, overarching approach, and the implementation of concepts remains hampered by the lack of clear case studies. Here, we present the results of a collaborative thought exercise involving 75 scientists and summarize them into 10 key recommendations covering: the most critical nexus issues of today, emerging themes, and where future efforts should be directed. We conclude that a nexus community of practice to promote open communication among researchers, to maintain and share standardized datasets, and to develop applied case studies will facilitate transparent comparisons of models and encourage the adoption of nexus approaches in practice.