After my first draft, Here is bit more refined blog post on what i want to do. I’m still interested in the water-energy-food-land (WEFL) nexus as a way of thinking about climate futures from the bottom up perspective, but I will now move beyond a broad “systems map” as i suggested and make the poster more focused around one question:
How do different nexus framings at different scales shape the kinds of climate futures that become plausible, desirable, or excluded?
In literature the nexus research is still framed in a very top-down and technocratic way, usually around efficiency, optimization, resource security and trade-offs. That work is useful, but several readings also point out that nexus thinking often underplays justice, power, participation and local adaptive capacity. This critique has become very important for me, because I don’t want my poster to reproduce a nexus approach that looks integrated on paper but ignores who benefits and who remains vulnerable.
The “Five Ws” nexus paper was especially helpful here because it pushes nexus research to ask not only what is connected, but also where, when, why, and for whom.
What I now want to achieve with the poster is to show that the nexus can be a genuinely integrated tool, but only if social systems are treated as central rather than secondary. That means bringing in actors, institutions, communities, firms as well as social movements and asking how power works across scales. I’m also planning to connect this more clearly to climate futures by showing how different multi-scale nexus configurations can lead toward very different futures, including efficient-but-unjust ones versus more adaptive and equitable ones.
References:
Weitz, N., Huber-Lee, A., Nilsson, M., Davis, M., Hoff, H., & Andréasson, K. (2021). The Five Ws of the water–energy–food nexus: A reflexive approach to nexus research. Frontiers in Water, 3, 729722.
Allouche, J., Middleton, C., & Gyawali, D. (2015). Nexus nirvana or nexus nullity? A dynamic approach to security and sustainability in the water–energy–food nexus. STEPS Working Paper 63. STEPS Centre.
Middleton, C., Allouche, J., Gyawali, D., & Allen, S. (2015). The rise and implications of the water–energy–food nexus in Southeast Asia through an environmental justice lens. Water Alternatives, 8(1), 627–654.
Wiegleb, V., & Bruns, A. (2018). What is driving the water–energy–food nexus? Discourses, knowledge, and politics of an emerging resource governance concept. Frontiers in Environmental Science, 6, 128.
Terrapon-Pfaff, J., Ortiz, W., Dienst, C., & Gröne, M.-C. (2018). Energising the WEF nexus to enhance sustainable development at local level. Journal of Environmental Management, 223, 409–416.
de Grenade, R., House-Peters, L., Scott, C. A., Thapa, B., Mills-Novoa, M., Gerlak, A., & Verbist, K. (2016). The nexus: Reconsidering environmental security and adaptive capacity. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 21, 15–21.
Ringler, C., Bhaduri, A., & Lawford, R. (2013). The nexus across water, energy, land and food (WELF): Potential for improved resource use efficiency? Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 5(6), 617–624.
Yupanqui, C., Dias, N., Goodarzi, M. R., Sharma, S., Vagheei, H., & Mohtar, R. (2025). A review of water-energy-food nexus frameworks, models, challenges and future opportunities to create an integrated, national security-based development index. Energy Nexus, 18, 100409.