The nexus as a political commodity: agricultural development, water policy and elite rivalry in Egypt

Long-term environmental trends like deforestation and acute catastrophes like Hurricane

Katrina in 2005 and the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster feature prominently on the

global agenda of the early twenty-first century. Historically, worries about the

environment as a threat to human civilization have been cyclical, as has been the

framing of man’s ability to respond effectively to such a threat (Fleming, 2010). The

salience of environmental narratives has depended on geopolitical imperatives and

economic cycles, yet strikingly in the last two decades (despite the Great Recession),

concerns about global warming, commodity prices and energy security have not faded

away. For an increasing number of observers these developments are an integral part of a

wider crisis of the global economic system (De Schutter, 2011; Patel, 2007).