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The 1922 Colorado River Compact started the long history of water governance in the Colorado River Basin. Over the last century, the institutional structure has shaped water governance in the basin. However, an understanding of the long-term evolution is lacking. This study examines how water management strategies have evolved at the basin scale by incorporating institutional, temporal, and network structure analysis methods to examine long-term changes. Content analysis was employed to systematically investigate encouraged and/or discouraged water management actions at different rule levels. The water governance network was examined at four points in time to map the institutional structure, actors, and governance level at which rules are issued and targeted. Using institutional analysis, we found constitutional, operational, and collective-choice level rules for water supply, storage, movement, and use have been altered via layering of new governance rules without major rule or responsibility alteration. The network analysis results indicate that key decision-making positions have remained and actors who issue and are targeted by the rules lack significant change. We found original positions of power have been maintained, potentially stagnating the space for problem-solving and management strategy renegotiation. Our results indicate that path dependency has shaped water governance and who is able to influence decision-making.

 

Providing adequate water supply to the growing number of urban residents will be a challenge faced by many utility managers throughout the remainder of this century. Though traditionally, water managers have looked toward supply‐based solutions (e.g., expanding reservoirs), recent trends indicate a shift toward demand‐side management (e.g., encouraging conservation behaviors). Here, we present an agent‐based model (ABM) that simulates water supply as a function of the local climatic conditions and water consumption, which is, in part, determined based on water conservation attitudes. Our results indicate the ABM performs well (normalized root mean squared error <10%) for the study area. Further, we explore various hypothetical demand management scenarios by changing the water conservation attitudes of the households (i.e., the archetypes). This scenario testing reveals a statistically significant improvement to water availability after successfully changing water conservation attitudes to be more participatory. Ultimately, this study aims to understand the nuances of water conservation attitudes and aid utilities in their goal to better manage urban water demand.

 

Food-energy-water nexus governance has been promoted as an approach to integrate the management and policy of the three sectors together for coordinated governance. However, there are limited approaches to evaluate, assess, or measure the governance of the food-energy-water nexus. Assessment of the governance process is important to move the concept from conceptualization toward implementation and to understand the specific potential and limits of the nexus governance process. Therefore, this study presents a theoretical framework and associated indicator set to assess urban collaborative food-energy-water nexus governance in practice. This theoretical framework is then applied to two example cases: Phoenix, Arizona, USA and Cape Town, South Africa. The implementation of this framework provides recommended factors needed for improved collaborative FEW nexus governance in cities. These cases showcase the utility of this framework in assessing urban collaborative food-energy-water nexus governance. 

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.