ABSTRACT
The world of development thinkers and practitioners is abuzz with a new lexicon: the idea of “the nexus” between water, food, and energy. In Asia and globally, the water–food–energy nexus has received growing attention from policy makers, researchers, and practitioners. The Scopus database recorded more than 221 peer-reviewed English language articles on the nexus in 2016 (Albrecht, Crootof, & Scott 2018). The nexus concept is thus the latest development paradigm shaping the world of resource management. A key premise of the nexus is that water use is interdependent with energy and food production. It proposes that these systems are inextricability linked, and thus integrated approaches are required that move beyond sectoral, policy, and disciplinary silos. Thus, an idea that started at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in 2008 has gained salience over time, through the Bonn Conference in 2011, the Sixth World Water Forum in Marseille, France, the Rio+20 negotiations in 2012, and the 2014 Stockholm Water Week to become the new vocabulary defining sustainable development amongst this sphere of policy makers. Unlike in the past, with environmental activists driving the discourse, this time it was also corporate actors that have played a key role in defining dominant debates around the nexus, resource efficiency, and scarcity.
