Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
3.8 Small-Scale, Appropriate Tech Approaches
Parastatal agencies such as irrigation and forest departments in developing countries
have historically played an important role in creating physical assets (such as dams
and trees) and arranging for their maintenance (Brook
eld and Blaikie
1987
).
However, over the years there has been a realization that the public sector has failed
to ensure cost-effective management due to rent seeking behaviour by public offi-
-
cials and resulting conflicts with local communities (Peluso
1992
). Such trends
have impaired mechanisms to monitor access to common pool resources such as
forests and exacerbated problems of soil erosion. In recent years, public choice
theory has successfully argued that community-based organizations can provide
low-cost arenas for management of forest and soil resources (North
1995
; Ostrom
1990
). Scholars have pointed out that factors such as trust, density of social ties,
shared norms and minimal recognition by governments of the rights of citizens to
organize may signi
cantly lower transaction costs of monitoring access to soil and
forest resources. But studies on co-provision involving partnerships between gov-
ernment agencies and community need not always deliver predicted outcomes on
account of simplistic assumptions guided by notions of linearity between human-
environment interaction (Kurian and Dietz
2013
). For one, low accountability
involving infrastructure construction may prevent the establishment of a basis for
community cooperation for management of environmental resources. Second,
successful community cooperation need not always lead to predicted environmental
outcomes on account of the in
uence of confounding variables such as slope and
soil type. Third, for successful environmental outcomes at the level of watershed to
be replicated at the basin scale would require robust feedback loops that support
both vertical and horizontal institutional linkages that can respond to vagaries of
both socio-economic heterogeneity and also bio-physical change and variability.
The cases presented brie
y above demonstrated that three-way linkages among
water, energy and food are exceedingly complex. Speci
c interactions among two
resources or sectors (for instance, energy and water) raise important challenges for
biophysical resilience and institutional dynamics not simply for these resources but
additionally for the third (food). Consideration of these case examples in historical
perspective also indicates that there exists accumulated knowledge and manage-
ment experience. In the concluding remarks, we outline opportunities to seize the
WEF Nexus to improve human quality of life, enhance ecosystem resilience and
respect planetary boundaries.
4 Conclusion: Harnessing the WEF Nexus for Global
Change Adaptation
Based on our review of the conceptual development of three-way linkages among
water, energy and food that are now
firmly established as a nexus of resources and
institutions, we turn to the WEF Nexus as a management and policy tool that offers
Search WWH ::
Custom Search