3rd Mekong Forum on Water, Food & Energy 2013. Presentation from Session 20: Is the Nexus Secure … and for Whom?: Unpacking Nexus Discourses on Food, Water, and Energy Security in South and Southeast Asia

1. COMPARING THE NEXUS ALONG THE MEKONG –
GANGA:
The need for a more Dynamic Approach To Water,
Energy and Food Security
© Suthep Kritsanavarin
Jeremy Allouche, Dipak Gyawali and Carl

2. Outline
•
•
•
•
Introduction
Background: The STEPS method
The Water Energy Food Nexus
Water, Energy, Food and Climate
Security
• Water storage and water (in)security
• Our research questions and planned
next steps

3. I. Introduction

4. “A Perfect Storm” (?)
• After 20 years of low food commodity prices, the price
shock of 2007/08 brought agriculture, food production and
food security sharply back into the limelight.
“A Prefect Storm”: The
words of John
Beddington, the Chief
Scientific Adviser to HM
Government, when
talking about the
relationships between
food, energy, water and
the climate
• Narratives of crisis, thresholds and boundaries, climate
change tipping points … and perfect storms

5. Background to our project
• We will examine the relationship between different types of
water storage and the WEF-Societal nexus,
• Comparative study of Laos-Thailand and Nepal-India using
the conceptual framework of “dynamic sustainabilities”
• Seek to unpack how discourses of food security, water
security and energy security may lead to particular
development pathways whilst precluding others
• Our intent is to explore the plurality of alternative pathways
for sustainable development in a changing political economy
of water in South and Southeast Asia
• We’re just getting started. ….
We are testing in South+SE Asia the falsifiability of the STEPS
method, and also seeking to extend it to the concept of security

6. Asia in Transition: New
Political Economies of Water
• The changing political economy of water, including the
changing role of market and state.
• But, built upon the foundations of the old political
economies
• New visions for the future of Asia’s major rivers, … often
built upon old unfulfilled mega-project schemes.
• Growing role of private sector in promoting, building and
operating large water infrastructure
• Shift towards private governance mechanisms

7. II. Background:
The “STEPS method”
More information here:
http://steps-centre.org/publication/the-pathways-approach-of-the-s

8. Evolving understanding of
sustainability
“to meet the needs of the present without
compromising the ability of the future
generations to meet their own needs.”
Our Common Future, 1987
Stability / equilibrium thinking

9. Dynamic Sustainability
• Dynamic Sustainability:
–Acceptance of complexity
–Acceptance of uncertainty and surprise (not full
knowledge and predictability)
–From assuming environmental systems in equilibrium to
thinking about non-equilibrium (dynamic, multiple stable
states, in multiple scale)
• Look at:
–Ecological systems
–Forms of knowledge and ways of knowing
–Economic, social and institutional processes
–Technological choices

10. How should we (and our institutions) deal
with different types of incomplete
knowledge in decision making?

11. Dynamic Sustainability:
Framing (explaining) systems
•Many different ways of understanding and explaining
a system … leading to different narratives
– Different values, experiences, interests…
•Diversity of framings of
structure and
– Politics of knowledge
– Politics of scale
– Politics of participation
system
function

12. style of action
control
(tractable drivers )
shock
(transient disruption)
temporality
of change
stress
STABILITY
respond
(intractable drivers )
RESILIENCE
Limits to
control
SUSTAINABILITY
DURABILITY
ROBUSTNESS
(enduring shift)
Rate and scale of change
• Different narratives prioritize
different aspects of systems
dynamics and propose different
strategies to deal with them
• Existing managerial
approaches have a
tendency towards
“stability” solutions

13. Dynamic Sustainability
and Governance

14. National Water Policies
= Rain in Colorado
Desert
Why?
Too much
‘Eagle Eye’ Science
Too little
‘Toad’s Eye’
Science
Both are necessary but neither alone is
sufficient:
ES lacks roots while TS lacks perspective
Dipak Gyawali, Nepal Water Conservation Foundation

15. What technology?
Whose technology?
Hegemony of
Runaway
Technology??!!

16. Governance towards inclusive and
fair ‘dynamic sustainability’
• Broadening out the inputs to appraisals
–Participatory engagement
–Accept a diversity of knowledges
–Humbly acknowledge uncertainty
–Address issues of rights, equity and power
• Opening up the outputs
–A range of options and possible alternatives
–More participatory, deliberative and reflexive forms of
governance

17. III. The Water Energy Food
(WEF) Nexus

18. The Water Energy Food Nexus
• World Economic Forum since 2008
• Strongly links water security to economic growth
• Water may be underpriced, creating agricultural bubbles
• “Bubble Burst” phenomenon
• Bonn Conference in 2011 and Rio +20 negotiations in 2012,
and thus linked to the concept of the “Green Economy”
• Integration of three systems - food, energy and water –
as the nexus sectors and which are interdependent
• Three guiding principles:
• Investing to sustain ecosystem services
• Creating more with less
• Accelerating access, integrating the poorest
• A new vocabulary to define sustainable development?

19. Bonn 2011 to Rio+20
• “the Green Economy, an economy that results in improved
human wellbeing and social equity, while significantly
reducing environmental risks and ecological scarcities...In
Green Economy natural capital is valued as a critical
economic asset as a provider for benefits for the poor” (Hoff,
2011)
Yet, the World Social Forum has called the Green
Economy “the Green Washington Consensus,”
stating
“this latest phase of capitalist expansion seeks to
exploit and profit by putting a price value on
the essential life-giving capacities of nature”

20. The market and the informal
economy/ commons in the Green
Economy
• Much water – food – energy
nexus in Asia remains within the
informal economy/ held as
commons.
• This raises questions about what
types of institutions are needed,
including the:
• Role of state
• Role of private sector
• What do you do when the
formal market (law,
insurance,

21. Some emergent themes
of the WEF Nexus
• Water security remains central to the concept of nexus:
• Under some interpretations, more dams needed as
storage technologies
• The ‘nexus’ debate is primarily a debate about dealing with
natural resource scarcity
• Scarcity may be constructed by inequitable access
• A need to discuss the decision making of trade-offs
• Water, land and energy have different governing
regimes, making nexus governance difficult.
• Some serious decisions on resource allocations: Who
takes them for whom?

22. Some emergent themes
of the WEF Nexus
• Replacing/ displacing/ complimenting Integrated Water
Resources Management (IWRM)?
• Are we talking about a singular nexus or a plural one,
• A range of pathways to sustainability
As a paradigm, food-water-energy nexus
remains vague, including its relationship with
food, water, and energy security.

23. Increased interest in FoodWater-Energy Nexus interest in
SE Asia
Is the nexus present on the ground? Why has
the nexus not gone native?

24. IV. Water Energy Food and
Climate Security

25. The Turn Towards
Non-Traditional Security
• There is increasing consideration by states to non-traditional
security, including food, water, energy, and climate security.
• Climate change is becoming the driving force behind these
debates and is seen as one of the major threats to:
• Global security
• National security
• Human security
• “Security anywhere
depends on sustainable
development everywhere’
Ban Ki-moon (Time
Magazine, 2008)

26. • Different actors understand and frame
sustainability and security differently ….
• “[security] for whom, by whom and from
whom, security of what and for what” (Brauch,
2011:62)

27. Water Security
– “[Water Security is] the availability of an acceptable
quantity and quality of water for health, livelihoods,
ecosystems and production, coupled with an
acceptable level of water-related risks to people,
environments and economics” (Grey and Sadoff, 2007)
– Water security to avoid “water wars” (state security)
(Gleick, 1993)
– Water security as competition over uses between
competing sectoral demands
– Water security as (right to) individual access to water
(freedom from fear, freedom from want, freedom to live
with dignity) (Gutierrez, 1999)

28. Food Security
• The World Food Summit of 1996 defined food security as
existing “when all people at all times have access to
sufficient, safe, nutritious food to maintain a healthy and
active life”
• Food Sovereignty, coined by Via Campesina in 1996
“asserts the right of people to define their own food systems.
Advocates of food sovereignty put the individuals who
produce, distribute and consume food at the center of
decisions on food systems and policies, rather than the
corporations and market institutions they believe have come
to dominate the global food system”

29. Energy Security
• “Energy Security: access to clean, reliable and affordable
energy services for cooking and heating, lighting,
communications and productive uses; uninterrupted physical
availability of energy at a price which is affordable, while
respecting environmental concerns” (Hoff, 2011)
• Is “National energy security” the same as
“energy for all”?
– Energy to meet basic needs
– Energy to ensure economic growth
– [In other words, whose energy
security is prioritized and
at what costs to other securities?]

30. Sustainable Security
• Preventive approach that focuses on interconnected and
long-term drivers of insecurity: that include climate change,
competition over resources, marginalisation of the majority
world and global militarisation.
– … early warning systems, threshold for natural resources, including planetary
boundaries
• Tends to see ecological change and transformation as
threats and appeal to the idea of stability, to bring the
‘situation under control’

31. A more dynamic approach
needed?
• Security has historically been concerned with safety and
certainty from contingency
•the condition of being protected from or not exposed to
danger.
style of action
respond
control
•This tends towards
(intractable drivers )
(tractable drivers )
stability thinking
shock
• Do we need a more
dynamic approach?
•To also see security from
the perspective of
accepting the inevitability
of change and of uncertainty
associated with it?
(transient disruption)
temporality
of change
stress
(enduring shift)
STABILITY
RESILIENCE
SUSTAINABILITY
DURABILITY
ROBUSTNESS

32. The hydrological cycle is a dynamic system, and even
more dynamic and uncertain under the conditions of
climate change.
http://www.euwfd.com/html/hydrological_cycle.html
Until now, influential state agencies responsible for water
have tended to view water and ecosystems as relatively
static systems that can be managed and controlled
(protection against flooding and drought, water for food
supply etc...)

33. V. Water Storage and Water
(In)Security

34. Water Storage and Water (In)Security
• Sean Cleary (World Economic Forum, 2009) highlights the
vicious circle of energy, water and climate change.
– ‘we need more energy for more development but the
current processes of energy production put pressure on
water availability which has an impact on climate;
climate change variability affects water availability
patterns and that, in turn, affects energy production’.
– Similar pressures exist for food production
• How can water best be stored that minimize risks due to
long term climate variability and change?

35. Typology of Water Storage
McCartney and Smakhtin (2010)
“in any given situation, each type of storage has its own niche
in terms of technical feasibility, socioeconomic sustainability
and institutional requirements, as well as impact on public
health and the environment” (p 4)

36. Storage solution options include…
1. Large dams: Collecting water where it concentrates / favoured
by large water ministries (expertise, control, …); well known
conflicts emerge
2. Rainwater harvesting: Collecting water where it falls /
favoured by social activists egalitarian groups / equitable
accessible, spread out wide / but not as efficient (limited in use /
no energy angle, although less energy needed for pumping)
3. Groundwater storage: requires more energy for pumping
(except mountain area from a spring) / widely available /
depends on groundwater quality
4. Storage though wetlands / soil moisture: most
environmentally friendly solution / benefits of water pollution

37. Plural Definition of the Water Problem
Control - too many people is the
problem: Solution is to manage
it through rules and regulation.
Bureaucratic
Hierarchism
Neruvian
Market
Individualism
Scarcity
Water
Stress and
Insecurity
Abundance
Depletion
Free innovation is the
solution to scarcity brought
about by too much control
and scare mongering.
ReganoThatcherite
Egalitarianism of Social
Movements/Greens
Profligacy is the
problem: solution is to
reign in our greed.
Answer is:
“Many 10%
Solutions”!!
Gandhian
Adapted from Rayner and Malone
(1998)

38. ‘Real’ versus ‘Imagined’
Himalayan Water Tower
Monsoon rains fill the
‘water tower’ and create
the buffer for the arid
season that keeps rivers
alive!!
August spring
Early monsoon
July spring
Foothill
spring
Blue water
Green
water
Peak
monsoon
Foothill permanent
spring
Dry period
water level
Blue
water
DipakG based on MadhukarU “Ponds and Landslides ”

39. Storage pathways
•Some suggest policy should emphasise more small water
projects and protecting watersheds, especially given the
socio-ecological benefits and ecosystem impact. (McCartney and
Smakhtin 2010)
•But, strategy for alternative storage options has largely been
ad-hoc (in contrast to building large dams)
•Systems that combine storage options that run
complementary to each other are more likely to succeed than
the large storage options alone (McCartney and Smakhtin 2010)
– This seems similar to MK14 on alternative energy options and
hydropower
•But are all pathways considered equally, and are they viewed
in a complimentary way?

40. VI. Our research questions
and planned next steps

41. Storage as a “dynamic system”
• Our project’s conceptual objectives are along two
lines, with a focus on water storage and WEF
security:
– To understand how the different framing of preferred
solutions (by whom) have
• a) Shaped the policy process
• and b) Determined outcomes;
• This includes in terms of the presence or absence of narratives
of water, energy and food security …. and the WEF nexus
– To critically consider the role “security” has played and
how it is understood by different actors
– To contribute to the idea of dynamic systems by
exploring options and combinations for water storage.

42. • We will compare a set of case studies from Nepal-India and
Thailand-Laos - Some similarities (and therefore value in
comparison):
– Each share transboundary rivers
– Increasingly tied together by jointly developed water resource
development projects/ cross-border power trade (“batteries” frame)
– Land versus non-land locked
– Large versus small (size; economy)
Other projects may be considered along the way

43. Our research questions:
• Who is promoting the food-water-energy-climate nexus, how
and why?
– What have been the intended and unintended outcomes to date?
• How is food, water, energy, and climate security both defined
and operationalized within the nexus?
– Is there a growing convergence (or divergence) between how these
various securities are understood within the Nexus?
• Which types of risk and uncertainties are formally recognized,
which remain unrecognized?
– How and why?
• Is the nexus replacing or complementing IWRM?
– What is new about nexus that did not exist in previous knowledge and
approaches?

44. Our research questions include:
• How are current pathways for water storage in Laos-Thailand
and Nepal-India justified according to energy, climate and
water security imperatives?
– To what extent do different storage technologies
addresses contradictions within the WEF nexus? (between
sectors and users upstream/downstream; transboundary)
– How are climate risks and uncertainties a) addressed and
b) drivers for particular pathways?
– How might a “pluralist” approach to the nexus ensure
“dynamic sustainability” (resilience and durability) and
social justice?

45. Thank you for listening
We very much welcome
your thoughts!
Please consider submitting your abstract
to the special issue of Water Alternatives
J.Allouche@ids.ac.uk ; dipakgyawali@ntc.net.np ;
carl.chulalongkorn@gmail.com