602
21.3.8 Collaborative Solutions
Throughout this book, we have seen challenges at the nexus in terms of balancing
demands for food, energy, and water against a wide array of consequences—environmental, human, economic, cultural, and other impacts. FEW management is
usually a matter of weighing trade-offs. Successful solutions meet societal demands
for food, energy, and water while minimizing adverse effects. In Chap. 20 (Managing
Human Conflicts) we described how conflicts among food, energy, and water sectors
range from individuals to global in scale with minor changes to one sector having
profound impacts in other sectors. However, defining the scale of connection
between all three has been challenging, unpredictable, and oftentimes, uncharted.
Conflicts can be exacerbated by climate change, ecosystem degradation, weak institutions and governance, population growth, and transboundary issues.
In Chap. 20, we described how constructively engaging stakeholders to participate in improving nexus relations and reducing conflict and develop solutions
that all, or most stakeholders can agree with. How stakeholders are engaged can
be specific to a particular scale or reach across a plethora of continuums including, but not limited to, negotiations, public involvement in regulatory policy
development, community preparedness workshops, and global agreements to
implement change.
Developing viable solutions to cope with conflict in the nexus is critical to future
management, policy development, and human interaction with the environment. In
our considerations of communities of practice, defining questions, and communications, we have already addressed many opportunities that help create a collaborative
framework for Nexus projects that lead to solutions likely to be acceptable to a
larger set of stakeholders.
There are, however, challenges in the development of cooperative solutions:
1. Identifying potential win-win situations;
2. Convincing parties that benefits are both real and worth of their engaged
cooperation;
3. Not allowing the interests of important stakeholders without political and economic power to be marginalized by powerful stakeholders; and
4. Governance systems (e.g., institutions and treaties) that are siloed in a manner
that artificially limits, rather than supports, cooperation across the separate
sectors.
Fortunately, there are many opportunities to advance collaborative solutions and
many tools to utilize.
Collaborative governance (see Sect. 20.3.4) is a class of processes that advance
collaborative policy and regulation as a solution. Collaborative governance engages
stakeholders in making, implementing, and enforcing public policy. Techniques of
collaborative governance include “deliberative democracy, e-democracy, public
conversations, participatory budgeting, citizen juries, study circles, collaborative
policymaking, and other forms of deliberation and dialogue among groups of stakeholders or citizens” (Blomgren-Bingham et al. 2005).
B. Kinne et al.
21.3.8 Collaborative Solutions
Throughout this book, we have seen challenges at the nexus in terms of balancing
demands for food, energy, and water against a wide array of consequences—environmental, human, economic, cultural, and other impacts. FEW management is
usually a matter of weighing trade-offs. Successful solutions meet societal demands
for food, energy, and water while minimizing adverse effects. In Chap. 20 (Managing
Human Conflicts) we described how conflicts among food, energy, and water sectors
range from individuals to global in scale with minor changes to one sector having
profound impacts in other sectors. However, defining the scale of connection
between all three has been challenging, unpredictable, and oftentimes, uncharted.
Conflicts can be exacerbated by climate change, ecosystem degradation, weak institutions and governance, population growth, and transboundary issues.
In Chap. 20, we described how constructively engaging stakeholders to participate in improving nexus relations and reducing conflict and develop solutions
that all, or most stakeholders can agree with. How stakeholders are engaged can
be specific to a particular scale or reach across a plethora of continuums including, but not limited to, negotiations, public involvement in regulatory policy
development, community preparedness workshops, and global agreements to
implement change.
Developing viable solutions to cope with conflict in the nexus is critical to future
management, policy development, and human interaction with the environment. In
our considerations of communities of practice, defining questions, and communications, we have already addressed many opportunities that help create a collaborative
framework for Nexus projects that lead to solutions likely to be acceptable to a
larger set of stakeholders.
There are, however, challenges in the development of cooperative solutions:
1. Identifying potential win-win situations;
2. Convincing parties that benefits are both real and worth of their engaged
cooperation;
3. Not allowing the interests of important stakeholders without political and economic power to be marginalized by powerful stakeholders; and
4. Governance systems (e.g., institutions and treaties) that are siloed in a manner
that artificially limits, rather than supports, cooperation across the separate
sectors.
Fortunately, there are many opportunities to advance collaborative solutions and
many tools to utilize.
Collaborative governance (see Sect. 20.3.4) is a class of processes that advance
collaborative policy and regulation as a solution. Collaborative governance engages
stakeholders in making, implementing, and enforcing public policy. Techniques of
collaborative governance include “deliberative democracy, e-democracy, public
conversations, participatory budgeting, citizen juries, study circles, collaborative
policymaking, and other forms of deliberation and dialogue among groups of stakeholders or citizens” (Blomgren-Bingham et al. 2005).
B. Kinne et al.