Governing the Nexus of Water, Energy and Food: The Case of Wastewater Reuse in Agriculture
Synergies are required to ensure coordination between UN agencies (on norms and indicators), Member States (on coherence of policy instruments) and consumers (on perceptions of safety and affordability of services) to advance the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) target 6.3 which focusses on reuse of wastewater. By employing the Nexus approach, it is feasible to overcome siloes by forging concepts of trade-offs and synergies to draw out coupled perspectives of bio-physical and institutional dimensions of water-energy-food interactions.
The proposed Wastewater Reuse Effectiveness Index (WREI) relied upon data valorization, expert opinion and coupling of bio-physical and institutional perspectives of water-energy-food interactions with potential to effectively monitor SDG 6.3. The WREI showcases cutting edge applications of the Nexus approach in managing trade-offs and fostering synergies in environmental planning and management.
Agriculture has today become a key driver for four of the eight Planetary Boundaries that are at a critical stage of risk: freshwater use, biogeochemical flows, changes in biosphere integrity and climate change. While planetary scale analysis may emphasize the finiteness of water, soil and waste resources and advocate for recharge of aquifers, restoration of soils, multiple uses of forest ecosystems, extended life-cycle management of infrastructure or tax rebates for adoption of renewable energy, administrative scale decisions need not necessarily support policies, projects or programs that emphasize circular economy pathways such as reuse, re-manufacture, replace, reduce and retrofit.
On the contrary, political economy compulsions may drive decision makers to commit more resources toward exploitation of newer sources of water and energy without ensuring that established infrastructure is properly functioning. This may satisfy entrenched political interests but may exacerbate pressure on environmental resources. Given the stark divergence between planetary and administrative scales of analysis, trade-off analysis can prove to be important in untangling the individual elements of interventions into costs and negative externalities that are involved covering water, energy and food.
Monitoring Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Target 6.3 on Wastewater Reuse: Method, Data and Applications of Agent Based Modeling
Conventional unidimensional approaches to monitoring SDGs emphasize: (1) a disproportionate focus on analysis of behavior of bio-physical resources; (2) efficiency of ecological systems; (3) statistical analysis of interactions between SDG goals and targets; and (4) case study research-data, models and approaches that have neither been pilot-tested nor valorized through engagement with governance structures and processes. Our proposed approach, on the other hand, advocates for improved understanding of the factors which determine whether and how effective wastewater reuse is possible while accommodating for regional variation and institutional change.
The Wastewater Reuse Effectiveness Index (WREI) composed of both bio-physical and institutional components, relied upon data valorization, expert opinion and coupling of bio-physical and institutional perspectives of water-energy-food interactions with potential to effectively monitor SDG 6.3. WREI showcases cutting edge applications of the Nexus approach in managing trade-offs and fostering synergies in environmental planning and management.
Empirically grounded agent-based models make it possible to evaluate whether hypothesized processes are consistent with empirically observed patterns of behavior. Therefore, in contexts characterized by complex feedback loops between resource use, agricultural productivity and considerations of distributional equity, posing the relevant question can be a major challenge in devising a methodology for monitoring a global goal on wastewater reuse.
Political Economy of Public Decision Making in the Water-Energy-Food Nexus
The systematic use of literature reviews and expert opinion to develop and pilot-test composite indices via place-based observatories raises the prospect of a data light approach to monitoring SDGs; specifically, what are the merits of relying on extensive survey data compared to composite indices that while being amenable to supporting benchmarking and scenario analysis can provide the insight needed to inform decision-making and robust monitoring of global goals?
Integrative modeling of trade-offs that incorporates perspectives from both bio-physical and institutional domains will highlight the role of the political economy in decision making. Trade-off analysis will reflect the fact that policy and management choices that operate at global, national and local scales are guided by norms and agency and individual behavior with regards to allocation of financial and human resources and institutional capacity that can have an impact on the goal of balancing bio-physical risks with institutional ones.
The Wastewater Reuse Effectiveness Index (WREI) can help to structure the discussion relating to the choice of norms, indicators and methodologies for data collection, analysis and synthesis and highlight the pressure this place on country nodal agencies in terms of required capacities and skill sets for monitoring effective reuse of wastewater. This is especially the case in countries where data is not collected even for critical indicators like the quantity of waste water generated.
Place-based Observatories as Mechanisms for Knowledge Translation
The continuous back and forth that is required between theory, method and active engagement with considerations of revenue and expenditure that pre-occupy policy makers can be supported by online learning platforms, co-curation of data and models and co-design of research questions. Place-based observatories can play an important role in developing and validating composite indices as a mechanism for monitoring global goals.
Place-based observatories can:
– Support the development of protocols in agent-based modeling so that scholars can check and build upon each other’s work
– Foster cooperation among networks of researchers and institutes to co-create research questions based on a unified interpretation of a policy challenge
– Support the development of typologies based for a given development challenge
– Structure data sets, analytical methods and results in a practical manner through use of knowledge translation tools such as scenario analysis, agent-based modeling, composite indices and performance benchmarking
– Facilitate valorisation of data and models aimed at the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of case studies that pilot-test and validate Nexus typologies and thresholds in development practice
Conclusion
This paper by undertaking a critical examination of the recent UN-WATER directive on SDG target 6.3 shows that synergies are required to ensure coordination between UN agencies, Member States and consumers to advance the achievement of the goal of reuse of wastewater. The development, pilot-testing and validation of the Wastewater Reuse Effectiveness Index (WREI) relied upon data valorization, expert opinion and coupling of bio-physical and institutional models of water-energy-food interactions. In doing so, the paper highlights the applications of the Nexus approach in managing trade-offs and fostering synergies in environmental planning and management.
The construction of the WREI was guided by the goal of clarifying the basis for normative change- in other words how can wastewater reuse be effectively promoted to respond to global concerns of water scarcity, poverty and climate change? The adoption of a Nexus framework for the analysis highlighted crucial trade-offs both among environmental resources and delivery of public services with potential to address the challenge of water, energy and food security.
Place-based observatories can play an important role in supporting trans-disciplinary research by downscaling global environmental models, developing nexus typologies of a developmental challenge and supporting data valorization and knowledge translation. Our analysis makes us skeptical about the prospects of global public goods research when it comes to advocating for institutional in contrast to normative change. This is because the effect of proposals for reform of budgetary strategies, plans for staff retrenchment and organizational re-structuring on policy outcomes can be multi-dimensional, recursive and non-monotonic.
Therefore, taking a different approach this paper proposes two hypotheses to rigorously test the role of norms and intentions of agents with reference to resource reuse and recovery and the potential of impact evaluations and policy instruments to aid uptake of technical options based on a robust typology of wastewater management and integrative Nexus thresholds to public action.
