MAGIC: Moving Towards Adaptive Governance in Complexity: Informing Nexus Security : Report on EU socio-ecological systems

The sustainability agenda builds on key components (i.e. food, water, energy, land use, climate and environment) that are inherently interconnected in a Nexus. MAGIC uses an innovative approach to test the robustness of narratives about the Nexus in Europe and focuses on the EU’ sustainable strategy. The aim of this deliverable is to operationalize and test a tool-kit to structure the quantitative analysis of the metabolic pattern of social-ecological systems in relation to their sustainability and the Nexus, at different levels of aggregation and spatial scales (EU, country or regional level). We use “quantitative story telling” as an alternative approach to use scientific information generated and better inform policy-makers. This deliverable builds on the methodological approach and the basic features of the theoretical framework of accounting called Multi-Scale Integrated Analysis of Societal and Ecosystem Metabolism (MuSIASEM). The application of the tool-kit in this deliverable has the only goal of illustrating the potentiality of the approach. In a series of chapters we i) present the theoretical background and features of the tool-kit used to characterize the state-of-the-play (diagnostic analysis) with regard to the sustainability of SES; ii) provide an overview of the results obtained in the analysis of 8 EU countries (i.e. France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Romania, Spain, Sweden and United Kingdom); iii) demonstrate the capability of the toolkit to perform the anlysis at diffrent scales (in this case, at a lower aggregated level -NUTS2-); and iv) highlight the methodological breakthrough provided by relational analysis and its relevance for policy making with regard to the water-energy-food-environment Nexus