NEXUS: Governing the nexus in Southern Africa

在IDS/STEPS、PLAAS和ACTS之间20多年来广泛合作的基础上，这一伙伴关系赠款将有助于围绕南部非洲土地-水-环境关系的治理制定新的研究和政策。随着土地和水的获取问题在南部非洲的政策议程上上升，一个关键的社会科学视角对于询问如何管理这一联系的问题至关重要。对准入政治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获得更有效的准入。这是一个关乎发展的关键问题，因此这一建议完全符合官方发展援助的要求。资源匮乏可能使某些群体——包括穷人、妇女和其他人——无法获得维持生计的重要资源。当更强大的集团为了追求农业、能源或环境服务的商业化而攫取土地和水资源时，围绕资源的冲突可能会出现。因此，如果要在政策中出现有利于穷人、面向环境可持续性的发展方向，就必须了解发展与资源背景下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大规模商业化的准入政策，水利项目，包括水电站，生物多样性保护和森林碳项目，其中应用了市场抵消机制。在每种情况下，我们的研究都将检查部门之间的联系，检查土地，水和环境之间的关系如何在不同的治理框架下进行谈判。这一伙伴关系将通过以下方式得到促进：教员和学生交流、联合范围界定活动和项目提案制定、一项面向学生的小额资助计划，以及一个将学者、政策制定者和从事“联系”主题工作的活动人士聚集在一起的国际会议。

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.