The Global Resource Nexus

The conference, which will be held virtually, is an international conference series dedicated to advancing research and the implementation of a Nexus Approach to resource management. The theme of the 2020 conference is the ‘Circular Economy in a Sustainable Society’, the conference fosters dialogue on how nexus thinking contributed to achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

In 2012 Prof Bleischwitz co-authored a report that revealed that unprecedented global resource demand could lead to severe market disruptions and violent conflict, unless the transatlantic community takes the lead in addressing the challenges of unparalleled demand for a nexus of resources. ‘The Global Resource Nexus – The Struggles for Land, Energy, Food, Water, and Minerals’, was a collaborative report by American and European fellows of the Transatlantic Academy, a research institution devoted to created common approaches to the long-term challenges facing Europe and North America.

The report was also co-authored by Dr Philip Andrews-Speed, a Senior Principal Fellow at the Energy Studies Institute of the National University of Singapore. Dr Andrews-Speed attended a roundtable at UCL in March this year, where he presented his work on China’s green energy ambitions. He recently published a paper with Sufang Zhang on the topic: ‘State versus market in China's low-carbon energy transition: An institutional perspective’.

The Global Resource Nexus report was followed by the following publications ‘Want, Waste or War' (Routledge, 2014), ‘Resource nexus perspectives towards the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals’ (Nature Sustainability, 2018) and the ‘Routledge Handbook of the Resource Nexus’, published in 2017, which became available in paperback this year.
 

Further information

• View Prof Raimund Bleischwitz’s profile

• Read the full report – ‘The Global Resource Nexus – The Struggles for Land, Energy, Food, Water, and Minerals’

• View Philip Andrews-Speed’s profile

• Read the paper ‘State versus market in China's low-carbon energy transition: An institutional perspective’

• ‘Want, Waste or War’

• ‘Resource nexus perspectives towards the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals’

• ‘Routledge Handbook of the Resource Nexus’