NEXUS: Governing the nexus in Southern Africa

Completed

Not Energy Related
Other Cross-Cutting Technologies or Research(Environmental, social and economic impacts)

Basic and strategic applied research

SOCIAL SCIENCES (Politics and International Studies)
SOCIAL SCIENCES (Development Studies)
AREA STUDIES (Middle Eastern and African Studies)

Sociological economical and environmental impact of energy (Other sociological economical and environmental impact of energy)

Professor I Scoones
Research Department
Institute of Development Studies

Standard

ESRC

13 November 2015

12 November 2018

36 months

£151,531

South East

Newton

Professor I Scoones, Research Department, Institute of Development Studies

Dr A Huff, Research Department, Institute of Development Studies
Dr C Ochieng, Sci and Tech Policy Analysis and Trainin, African Centre for Technology Studies

Building on extensive collaboration between IDS/STEPS, PLAAS and ACTS over 20 years, this partnership grant will help develop new research and policy influencing activities around the governance of the land-water-environment nexus in southern Africa.As questions of land and water access rise up the policy agenda in southern Africa, a critical social science perspective is crucial to ask questions about how the nexus is governed. A focus on the politics of access will illuminate how different state, market and civil society actions can contribute to more effective access for the widest number of people.This is a crucial question for development, making this proposal firmly 'ODA compliant'. Resource scarcities can act to exclude certain groups - including the poor, women and others - from vital resources for livelihoods. Conflicts over resources may emerge when more powerful groups grab land and water in the pursuit of the commercialisation of agriculture, energy or environmental services. Thus understanding the relationships between changing capitalist relations in the context of development and resources is essential if pro-poor, development oriented orientations for environmental sustainability are to emerge in policy.In this project, we will examine the politics of access around the large-scale commercialisation of agriculture, water projects, including hydropower dams, and biodiversity conservation and forest carbon projects, where market offset mechanisms are applied. In each case our studies will examine the nexus between sectors, examining how relations between land, water and environment are negotiated in different governance frameworks.The partnership will be facilitated through a combination of staff and student exchanges, joint scoping activities and project proposal development, a small grants programme for students, and an international conference that will bring together academics, policymakers and activists working on 'nexus' themes.

01/12/15