FAPESP-ESRC-NWO Joint Call Sustainable Urban Development Resilience and vulnerability at the urban Nexus of food, water, energy and the environment

城市是复杂的网络空间。由于农村向城市的迁移和气候变化，再加上其他压力(例如来自“全球”市场的压力)，提供许多基本服务和商品，如粮食、水和能源，需要不断的适应和改革。随着对这些服务的需求增加，迫切需要以公平的方式改善获得机会，提高使用效率，并保护支持这些服务所依赖的自然资源的生态系统。然而，旨在创建“有弹性的”城市食品、水和能源系统的主流干预措施‘与许多重大挑战有关。这些都是我们研究的重点。首先，城市居民获得重点服务的机会分布不均。由于脆弱性(理解为“个人或群体没有能力应对逆境”)，城市穷人比其他社会阶层更容易感受到贫穷和脆弱性，关键服务的不平等提供可能会加剧贫穷和脆弱性。第二，提供基本服务所涉及的物质流动和基础设施是严重相互依赖的。这种相互依赖关系最近在食物、水、能源和环境/气候“关联”的范畴下获得了相当大的国际政策关注。与Nexus相关的是：a)权衡取舍，例如在用水提供生物能源而不是食物方面遇到的取舍；b)当一个部门的问题(如水污染)损害其他部门(如粮食供应)时，情况恶化；c)例如，在消除能源获取障碍时产生的协同效应，使食物和/或水的流动更加顺畅。我们的研究考察了这三组挑战是如何相互作用的。例如，易受饥饿和无法获得能源会如何加剧易受水污染的影响。我们将探讨由社会、技术或生态‘事件’产生的任何新的脆弱性如何与现有形式的不安全和不公正相互作用。例如，为自己的食物供应而在城市周围开辟河床的棚户区居民可能最直接地受到周期性洪水的影响。该项目的具体目标是：1.研究在东非、巴西和欧洲三个高度活跃的城市，城市社区的脆弱性如何与食品、水和环境关系的权衡(一种服务对一种资源的使用减少了另一种服务的可获得性，例如影响粮食生产的生物能源的用水)和恶化(一个部门的问题影响另一个部门--例如影响粮食的水污染)共同构成。利用城市人口脆弱性的动态地图，为公共政策和其他从业者领导的复原力建设工作提供信息。特别是审查城市治理的机会，以利用城市联系的协同作用(例如，在消除能源获取障碍时改善食物和水的流动)，并重新配置弹性和公平的权衡。该项目侧重于东非、巴西和东欧三个中等城市的城市穷人获得基础设施和资源流动的机会，涉及“贫穷、不平等和脆弱性”和“基础设施和建成环境”这两个政策领域。通过参与性的愿景建设讲习班以及决策者和非政府组织代表的城市间交流，该项目试图让这些预期的受益者直接参与研究进程。将重点放在用户的做法及其(重新)与政策主导的干预措施的联系上。我们的“实践生态”方法最终将为深化城市治理中的民主提供新的见解。为了促进广泛的交流，该项目的主要研究成果(框架、方法、研究结果)将转化为供学校使用的政策简报、博客文章、匿名数字档案和教材。

Cities are complex networked spaces. Due to rural-urban migration and climate change, augmented by other pressures (e.g. from 'global' markets), provisioning of many basic services and commodities such as food, water and energy requires constant adaptation and reform. With increased demand on these services, there are urgent needs to improve access in an equitable way, increase efficiency of use, and to preserve the ecosystems that support the natural resources upon which these services depend. However, mainstream interventions aimed at creating 'resilient' urban food, water and energy systems' are associated with a number of critical challenges. These are the focus of our research.First, access to key services is unevenly distributed among city dwellers. With vulnerability (understood as 'the inability of an individual or group to cope with adversities), being experienced by the urban poor more acutely than other social classes Both poverty and vulnerability may be exacerbated by the unequal provisioning of key services.Second, the material flows and infrastructures involved in provisioning basic services are deeply interdependent. This interdependence has recently gained considerable international policy attention under the rubric of the 'Nexus' of food, water, energy and the environment/climate. Associated with the Nexus are, a) trade-offs such as those encountered in water use for provisioning bio-energy instead of food; b) aggravations when one sector's problems (such as water pollution) impair others (e.g. food provision); and c) synergies that arise, for example, when removing a barrier to energy access streamlines flows of food and/or water. Our research examines how these three sets of challenges interact. For example how vulnerability to water contamination may be exacerbated by vulnerability to hunger and lack of access to energy. We will explore how any new vulnerabilities engendered by a social, technological or ecological 'events' interact with existing forms of insecurity and injustice. For instance, squatters cultivating a peri-urban riverbed for their own food provision may be most directly affected by cyclical flooding. Specifically the project aims to:1.Examine how vulnerabilities within urban communities are co-constituted with the trade-offs (the use of a resource for one service reducing availability for another e.g water use for bioenergy affecting food production) and aggravations (the problems in one sector affecting another - e.g water pollution affecting food) at the food, water and environment nexus, in three highly-dynamic cities in East Africa, Brazil and Europe.2. Utilise dynamic maps of vulnerabilities amongst urban populations to inform resilience-building efforts led by public policy and other practitioners. In particular to examine opportunities for urban governance to exploit the synergies (e.g when removing barriers to energy access improves flows of food and water) of the urban Nexus, and reconfigure the trade-offs towards both resilience and equity. Focussing on access to infrastructures and resource flows by the urban poor in three mid-sized cities in East Africa, Brazil and Eastern Europe, the project engages with the two policy areas of 'poverty, inequality and vulnerability' and 'infrastructure and the built environment'. Through participatory vision-building workshops and inter-city exchanges of policymakers and NGO representatives, the project attempts to involve these expected beneficiaries directly in the research process. Placing central importance on users' practices and their (re)connection with policy-led interventions. Our 'ecology of practice' approach will ultimately contribute new insights into the deepening of democracy in urban governance. To facilitate broad-based communication, the project's key research outputs (frames, methodologies, findings) will be converted into policy briefs, blog posts, anonymized digital archives and teaching materials for schools.