NEXUS: Governing the nexus in Southern Africa

在IDS/STEPS、PLAAS和CNAS之间20多年的广泛合作基础上，该伙伴关系赠款将帮助围绕南部非洲土地-水-环境关系的治理开展新的研究和政策影响活动。随着土地和水的获取问题在南部非洲的政策议程中上升，一个关键的社会科学视角对于提出如何管理这一关系的问题至关重要。对获取政策的关注将阐明不同的国家、市场和民间社会行动如何有助于最广泛的人更有效地获取。这是发展的一个关键问题，使这一建议坚定地“符合官方发展援助”。资源稀缺可能导致某些群体-包括穷人、妇女和其他人-无法获得重要的生计资源。当更强大的团体为了追求农业、能源或环境服务的商业化而攫取土地和水资源时，可能会出现资源冲突。因此，如果要在政策中形成有利于穷人、面向发展的环境可持续性方向，就必须了解在发展和资源方面不断变化的资本主义关系之间的关系。在这个项目中，我们将研究围绕农业，水利项目，包括水电大坝，生物多样性保护和森林碳项目的大规模商业化的准入政策，其中应用市场抵消机制。在每一个案例中，我们的研究将审查部门之间的关系，审查土地、水和环境之间的关系如何在不同的治理框架中谈判。将通过工作人员和学生交流、联合范围界定活动和项目提案制定、学生小额赠款方案以及将学术界、决策者和从事“关系”主题工作的活动家聚集在一起的国际会议来促进这种伙伴关系。

Building on extensive collaboration between IDS/STEPS, PLAAS and ACTS over 20 years, this partnership grant will help develop new research and policy influencing activities around the governance of the land-water-environment nexus in southern Africa. As questions of land and water access rise up the policy agenda in southern Africa, a critical social science perspective is crucial to ask questions about how the nexus is governed. A focus on the politics of access will illuminate how different state, market and civil society actions can contribute to more effective access for the widest number of people. This is a crucial question for development, making this proposal firmly 'ODA compliant'. Resource scarcities can act to exclude certain groups - including the poor, women and others - from vital resources for livelihoods. Conflicts over resources may emerge when more powerful groups grab land and water in the pursuit of the commercialisation of agriculture, energy or environmental services. Thus understanding the relationships between changing capitalist relations in the context of development and resources is essential if pro-poor, development oriented orientations for environmental sustainability are to emerge in policy. In this project, we will examine the politics of access around the large-scale commercialisation of agriculture, water projects, including hydropower dams, and biodiversity conservation and forest carbon projects, where market offset mechanisms are applied. In each case our studies will examine the nexus between sectors, examining how relations between land, water and environment are negotiated in different governance frameworks. The partnership will be facilitated through a combination of staff and student exchanges, joint scoping activities and project proposal development, a small grants programme for students, and an international conference that will bring together academics, policymakers and activists working on 'nexus' themes.