A different view of resources

In recent years, the concept of the resource nexus has been widely adopted in research and policy circles as a powerful new way of understanding the relationships between multiple resources and their sustainable management.  

The nexus approach focuses on five essential resources: water, food, energy, materials and land, as well as the social and institutional connections that surround them – offering a new way to better govern these relationships in an era of geopolitical uncertainty.  

The Resource Nexus Handbook, edited by Professor Raimund Bleischwitz, Deputy Director of the Institute for Sustainable Resources,  with co-editors Dr Catalina Spataru, Lecturer at the UCL Energy Institute, Holger Hoff, Ester van der Voet and Stacy VanDeveer, provides a comprehensive review of current thinking on the topic.  

Published in 2017, the book also provides case studies to demonstrate how the nexus can help illuminate issues such as land grabs, climate change and renewable energy, and the growing importance of economies such as China in the supply and demand of resources. 

The handbook doesn’t shy away from proposing models for sound governance, and provides tools, methods and modelling approaches to analyse resource use from a nexus perspective