Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
environmental resource users. As a result decision-makers cannot design pro-
gramme and project interventions with precision and may be unable to respond
effectively to feedback from consumers on changes in service delivery parameters
(affordability, reliability or quality) or to the effects of increased variability in
frequency, intensity and duration of environmental shocks (droughts or
oods).
2.3 Expanding the Conventional WEF Nexus:
An Institutional Perspective
In the context of developing and emerging economies, an institutional perspective
on the WEF Nexus would encompass three broad questions: (a) Intersectionality:
what are the critical mass factors at the intersection of material
fluxes, public
ne
the scope and relevance of the nexus approach to environmental management? (b)
Interactionality: how can feedback loops be structured to capture both vertical and
horizontal linkages among (i) legal and policy reform, (ii) structural changes in
economy and society and (iii) variability in the biophysical environment? (c)
Hybridity: what role can trans-disciplinary approaches play in building capacity
through support for innovative planning instruments and monitoring and assess-
ment methods, advances in pedagogic and didactic techniques, formative and
summative assessments and accreditation and certi
financing and changes in institutional and biophysical environments that can de
cation of blended learning
curricula that support the achievement of nexus competency.
There are at least three ways to examine institutional dimensions of the WEF
Nexus. One important method starts with institutional
'
levels
'
of analysis (some-
times mislabelled as
), beginning at the smallest household level and
increasing to the community, municipal, substate regional, state, interstate, mac-
roregional, national, binational and multinational levels. As each level often has a
different legislation, organizations and guiding rules for resource management in
the water, energy and food sectors, it is valuable for analytical as well as descriptive
purposes to identify the relevant levels and examine how they interact within and
across sectors.
If the
'
scales
'
first perspective analyses institutional structures, a second perspective can
focus on institutional functions. The roles of public institutions for resource man-
agement, for example, span the range of state functions (e.g. Clark and Dear
1984
).
These include fostering social consensus, enabling increased economic production,
promoting social integration through education and ritual activities, and adminis-
trating laws and regulations justly. Insofar as these public institutions promote
economic production, they converge with some of the functions of private insti-
tutions; while insofar as they promote social consensus and integration, they con-
verge with some of the functions of non-governmental institutions. Ostrom (
1990
)
elaborates and instrumentalizes these structural and functional relationships of
resource management institutions in her
'
'
institutional design principles
for com-
mon property resource management.
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