Publications /
Policy Brief

Back
Download PDF
The Water – Energy – Food Nexus: Who Owns it?
Authors
Rabi Mohtar
January 25, 2016
Related topics: 

The water-energy-food (WEF) nexus has emerged over the last few years as an innovative and holistic platform for resource management and allocation. Unlike many other disciplines that make their way to the policy circle through academic debates, the nexus emerged from the global and policy business community as a platform to guide sustainability efforts. It is, with no doubt, that the nexus will find its way to the implementation of the sustainability development goals (SDGs), approved by the UN general assembly in September 2015. The nexus is also finding its way to the academic community, where a lot of scientific questions are awaiting answers: what are the data needs? What are appropriate modelling strategies? How will we scale (upscaling and downscaling)? And what is the appropriate scale for approaching the nexus? These are but a few of the technical challenges. With that in mind, critical questions need answers regarding the governance of the nexus, including ownership and appropriate governance structures. The global community is in urgent need of good, successful examples of how the nexus has helped reach water, energy and food security goals.

RELATED CONTENT

  • U.S. steel and aluminium tariffs: how should the EU respond?
    Authors
    Uri Dadush
    March 15, 2018
    President Trump’s proclamation that, because of national security concerns, he will apply a 25% tariff on all steel and a 10% tariff on all aluminium imports into the United States – except provisionally and dependent on NAFTA negotiations those from Canada and Mexico – affects, respectively 5.1 billion Euros and 1.1 billion Euros of EU exports. These are not trivial sums. However, the invocation of the national security exception in this case has implications that go far beyond nar ...
  • Brussels Forum : the Moroccan migration policy presented in a discussion on migrant crisis
    Authors
    March 15, 2018
    « Revise, Reboot, Rebuild : Strategies for a time of Distrust »: that was this year’s theme for the Brussels Forum, a yearly high-level conference held from March 8th to 10th by the US think tank German Marshall Fund (GMF), partner of the OCP Policy Center who attended the event through its delegation. This meeting of some 400 policymakers, academics and private sector operators is reviewing the relationship between Europe and the United States. Brexit, the Trump administration, the ...
  • The Financialization of Commodity Markets: A Short-lived Phenomenon?
    Authors
    Yves Jégourel
    March 14, 2018
    Commodities are at the very heart of economic activity. From oil to wheat, from aluminum to coffee or rubber, we are all, in one way or another and to varying degrees, dependent on commodities. Different in terms of their physical properties but governed by common economic mechanisms, traded on global and oligopolistic markets, subject to intense competitive pressures and speculative bets, often marked by highly volatile prices, objects of geopolitical rivalries or cooperatives stra ...
  • L’ « Occident » a-t-il survécu à la chute de l’URSS ?
    Authors
    Abdelhak Bassou
    March 13, 2018
    S’adressant à l’Occident en 1989, Alexandre Arbatov, conseiller diplomatique de Mikhaïl Gorbatchev avait dit : "nous allons vous rendre le pire des services, nous allons vous priver d'ennemi ". Ce que le russe n’avait pas prévu à ce moment, c’est que la disparition de l’Union Soviétique allait priver l’occident de bien plus que d’un ennemi : elle allait le priver de son identité. Durant la guerre froide, il existait un camp de l’Est et un camp de l’Ouest. Cet antagonisme donnait à ...
  • Development through gender equality
    Authors
    Otaviano Canuto
    March 7, 2018
    Brazilian conditional cash transfers are small amounts of money the government distributes directly to very poor households on condition that their children attend school and are vaccinated. The money goes to the women of the household, because research undertaken in the 1990s – and later confirmed in other countries – showed an increase in babies' height and weight when women have more control over household income. Greater control over household resources by women can strengthen a ...
  • Download PDF
    Policy proposal to Reduce Skilled Unemployment in Morocco using Public- Private Partnerships (PPPs): 3R-PPP – Retrain-Rebalance-Reduce-PPP
    Authors
    Thomas Pereira da Silva
    March 7, 2018
    This proposal seeks to contribute to reduce, in a cost-effective way, Morocco’s unusually high, persistent and growing unemployment level for university graduates1. It complements and enhances the existing Université Internationale de Rabat (UIR) Public-Private Partnership (PPP). Tertiary enrolment in Morocco has been increasing above what seems to be labor market absorptive capacity. Over the past decade, the share of the unemployed with university degrees as a percentage of total ...