ACCESS TO WATER AND THE NEXUS WITH FOOD, ENERGY AND LAND: THEMES AND INDICATORS FOR THE POST2015 GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT AGENDA

Scholars and practitioners are currently discussing new sets of water goals, targets and indicators in order to contribute to the definition of the post 2015 global development agenda and the UN Sustainable Development Goals. The panel aimed at contributing to this debate, addressing future scenarios on access to water and on water resources management, and advancing proposals on themes, goals, and processes to be included within the post 2015 global development agenda. The panel adopted a multidisciplinary approach (involving lawyers, political scientists, geographers, engineers, geologists, agronomists and planners), highlighting the interaction between the technical aspects and the socio-political dimensions of access to water and water resources management. Water policies negotiation, both at global and at local level, should be understood and assessed in the context of two main – and sometimes competing – trends. On one side the growing consensus registered in international fora around the framework of “the water, food and energy nexus ” – sometimes explicitly including within this nexus also “land ” or “climate change”. This approach highlights the interdependence of water, energy and food security and the natural resources that underpin that security, such as land. While this trend might offer a coherent framework to address in a comprehensive way sustainability issues, some have pointed at the risk of securitizing water issues. Moreover the approach underpinning the nexus remains firmly anchored in the modernist perspective representing water apart from its socio-cultural context and reducing it to the mere H2O resource