Abstract
This chapter draws upon three published case studies covering different aspects of water, soil, and waste management to discuss issues that are crucial to an improved understanding of the nexus approach to management of environmental resources. Based on previous research, we identified three questions that can guide the discussion on the nexus approach (Kurian and Ardakanian in Governing the nexus: water, soil and waste resources considering global change, UNU-Springer, Dordrecht, 2015). (1) Question of intersectionality: What are the critical mass of factors at the intersection of material fluxes, public financing and heterogeneity, and changes in institutional and biophysical environment that define environmental outcomes? (2) Question of interactionality: How can feedback loops be structured to capture both vertical and horizontal interactions between legal and policy reform, structural changes in economy and society, and variability in the biophysical environment? (3) Question of hybridity: What role can transdisciplinary methods play in supporting integrative analysis of biophysical and institutional processes that have a bearing on the use and management of environmental resources?
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Notes
- 1.
Institutions are understood here as rules covering potentially constitutional, collective choice and operational rules (Ostrom 1990).
- 2.
Reality includes a reflection of the diversity, complexity and dynamics of related processes, as was highlighted by Hirsch Hadorn et al. (2006).
- 3.
See Kurian (2010) for more information on this case study.
- 4.
Improved Fallow (IF) option includes planting of pigeon pea and crotolaria seeds in plots of annual crops like maize, Job’s Tears and upland rice to enrich the poor bush fallow with additional biomass, early ground cover and extra litter to improve soil and suppress weeds in a short period (De Rouw et al. 2003: 17).
- 5.
- 6.
See Kurian and Dietz (2013) for more information on this case study.
- 7.
For more information on this case study, refer to Kurian et al. (2013).
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Kurian, M., Ardakanian, R., Gonçalves Veiga, L., Meyer, K. (2016). Institutions and the Nexus Approach. In: Resources, Services and Risks. SpringerBriefs in Environmental Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28706-5_2
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