Ensuring resilient food systems and sustainable healthy diets for all requires much higher water use, however, water resources are finite, geographically dispersed, volatile under climate change, and required for other vital functions including ecosystems and the services they provide. Good governance for resilient water resources is a necessary precursor to deciding on solutions, sourcing finance, and delivering infrastructure. Six attributes that together provide a foundation for good governance to reduce future water risks to food systems are proposed. These attributes dovetail in their dual focus on incorporating adaptive learning and new knowledge, and adopting the types of governance systems required for water resilient food systems. The attributes are also founded in the need to greater recognise the role natural, healthy ecosystems play in food systems. The attributes are listed below and are grounded in scientific evidence and the diverse collective experience and expertise of stakeholders working across the science-policy interface: Adopting interconnected systems thinking that embraces the complexity of how we produce, distribute, and add value to food including harnessing the experience and expertise of stakeholders s; adopting multi-level inclusive governance and supporting inclusive participation; enabling continual innovation, new knowledge and learning, and information dissemination; incorporating diversity and redundancy for resilience to shocks; ensuring system preparedness to shocks; and planning for the long term. This will require food and water systems to pro-actively work together toward a socially and environmentally just space that considers the water and food needs of people, the ecosystems that underpin our food systems, and broader energy and equity concerns.

The sustainable development goals (SDGs) challenge markets, regulators and practitioners to achieve multiple objectives on water, food and energy. This calls for responses that are coordinated and scaled appropriately. Learning from water–energy–food nexus could support much-needed building of links between the separate SDGs. The concept has highlighted how risks manifest when blinkered development and management of water, food and energy reduce resource security across sectors and far-reaching scales. However, three under-studied dimensions of these risks must be better considered in order to identify leverage points for sustainable development: first, externalities and shared risks across multiple scales; second, innovative government mechanisms for shared risks; and third, negotiating the balance between silos, politics and power in addressing shared risks.

The multiple, complex and systemic problems of the agriculture–food–water–environment nexus (“Nexus”) are among the most significant challenges of the 21st century. China is a key site for Nexus research amidst profound socio‐environmental problems. The policy implications of these problems have been authoritatively summarized elsewhere. This study presents discussions at an international workshop in Guangzhou that asked instead “What science is needed to deliver the growing policy commitments regarding these challenges? And, What changes are needed to the science itself?” Understanding and effective intervention regarding the Nexus calls for a paradigm shift: to a new kind of science of (capacity for) international, interdisciplinary, and impactful research working with and within complex socio‐natural systems. We here argue that science must become proactive in approach, striving only for “minimal harm” not “silver bullet” solutions, and adopting an explicitly long‐term strategic perspective. Together, these arguments lead to calls for reorienting science and science policy in three ways: from short‐term remediation to longer‐term optimization; from a focus on environmental threats to one on the opportunities for international collaborative learning; and toward supporting new forms of scientific career. We bring these points together by recommending a new form of scientific institution: a global network of collaborative Nexus Centres, under the umbrella of a global Food Nexus Organization akin to those of the human genome and proteome.

For nexus approaches to be successful in their analysis and influence, integration dynamics must be understood in the context of larger power dynamics. Current analysis barely take this dimension into account. In this article, we aim to delimit and understand the power-related enabling conditions for integration processes in a situation of water, food and energy conflicts in Cambodia. To do so, we reflect on our experiences and outcomes in a knowledge co-production approach for identifying nexus indicators in a WWF Conservation Mekong Flooded Forest Landscape. We conduct an analysis of stakeholder and partner qualitative interview data collected within the LIVES (Linked Indicators for Vital Ecosystem Services) project to explore three examples how we engaged with power dynamics in the course of the research. By doing so, this article provides first (1) learning on existing challenges regarding integration in the nexus, then (2) it analyses effects of coproduction processes when considering power dynamics in the nexus both in terms of stalemate and enabling conditions for reinforced integration. Finally (3), this article analyses the role that plays structure and agency in such integration processes.

Kabir, K.A., Saha, S.B., Phillips, M., Karim, M., Meisner, C.A. (2016) Global Aquaculture Advocate, online 22 Feb (open access) | The Southwestern coastal zone of Bangladesh is agro-based and one of the worldâ??s most populous, poverty-stricken and food-insecure regions, with high vulnerability to climate change. Shrimp aquaculture rapidly expanded in this tidal floodplain but shrimp is highly susceptible to disease, has less contribution in local consumption, and its profitability depends on international market prices, leading the demand for improving the farming system. There is an opportunity to diversify and increase system productivity by integrating rice with aquaculture during the monsoon season through adoption of some water management practices at an individual and community level. This also minimizes the effluent load of aquaculture intensification