Partnerships and Network Governance for Urban Food-Energy-Water (FEW) Nexus

ABSTRACT

Few studies have examined the critical role of policy and network governance mechanism in addressing sustainability and FEW nexuses. This study aims to examine the efforts in meeting the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) at the urban environment. More specifically, the study seeks to examine how growing demands on the food-energy-water (FEW) nexuses can be met through partnerships in dense urban areas as population growth and human migration continue to accelerate in metropolitan areas worldwide. The goal of the article is to address the role of multi-stakeholder partnership in the successful implementation of FEW nexus projects. The study highlights how FEW nexus projects can improve urban sustainability and equity with the aid of stakeholder involvement. The study contributes how FEW nexus projects can improve urban sustainability with stakeholder engagement with varying degrees of partnerships with public, private, and nonprofit sector organizations in both policy and governance.

KEYWORDS:

• Sustainability
• food-energy-water (FEW) nexus
• partnerships
• network governance

Acknowledgments

The Belmont Forum – Joint Programming Initiative Urban Europe and NSF “Food-Water-Energy Nexus: Enabling adaptive integration of technology to enhance community resilience” Award#: 1830036, Project#: 730254

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the NSF/BElmontForum [The Belmont Forum – Joint Programming Initiative].