[MUSIC] Hi, welcome to the first class of this course on the nexus. And we would like to use this first class to have first of all a reflection about the term the nexus. What does the nexus means? Why is getting so popular? If you are into sustainability science you will that in the last years, there's been a real explosion of this term that is a sort of everyone is using it. So the first lesson is divided in three session. In the first one we are just reflecting on what the nexus means. What we mean when we say the nexus. The second one will be a qualitative reflection of what type of problems they consider on nexus. Implied there are outside the standard, the redaction, is why you have to do the particular analysis. The last session we gave an example of how it is possible to deal with the nexus in particular terms by doing a different type of analysis. So particularly in this session we will look at the different definition of The Nexus and to try to understand what is the problem. Why is it so special? So first of all, we ask students or professor around to see surprise question. Can you define what is the nexus? So, in the next video you will see what the reaction is to this question. >> I think that the nexus is about complexity with issues relating to human activities and environments. >> I think the nexus is this intricate balance that is there between water,energy and food, and how we can kind of manage it to be sustained. >> What energy food nexus, and that's really, for me, it's three interconnected products. >> Nexus is the statutory relation of the factors sustaining the life on the earth. >> The nexus is the relation between climate change and water, food, and agriculture. >> Okay, so the nexus is for me personally probably one of the most relevant pillars. The triangle which society depends or it gets or is it kind of based on. >> It is the nexus between energy, food, land and water is the most important thing when doing research. In a way that comes back early on, because early agriculture culture was a topic for our and for ecological economics from the beginning in. But, of course, water and land is also crucial for the welfare of humanity. So, this nexus is a brilliant idea for a driver of research on ecological economics, political ecology, industrial ecology and everything. >> Means relation dependence of one item from another or dependence from each other It takes energy to make water available, to pump the water from underground, to make it drinkable. It takes water to generate energy through fossil fuel power plants and through hydroelectric power plants. And takes water, energy and materials to make food in agriculture or in industry. This means that the relation between different items must be recognized in order to understand how a society is supported. People living in a city receives electricity through the grid, receives water through the aqueduct, and also receives food from the market. And all those things are interconnected. Recognizing the interconnection among all these input items means understanding the nexus of order, energy and food. >> It's a network. >> I don't know, I never heard of it. >> Okay, now that we saw that there is not such a clear idea what the nexus is, let's see what you could read on scientific papers dealing with the nexus. I mean would mean reading 40, 50 papers on the nexus. It's very popular. And then, even when you are not just asking a question as a surprise question but you are dealing with attacks or statements they are being written in scientific papers. So they had the time to think about and then they get information about. You can find out that there are different ideas or different professional what the nexus is. So the first things is the nexus is that real problem, a material problem you'll find outside. So you could have different journals in which you can get is the relationship between the three resources. Water, energy, food, and they are interrelated, they're interdependent. So, the nexus is a problem because it requires addressing externalities. This in the journal, means that when you are looking at water, you are externalizing or getting externalization from energy or from food. So, you have to deal with practical problem of how to do things, like the desalination. And then, there are trade-offs, if you do something, you are losing in another. And this implies the existence of conflict over resources. The land, the water, and energy system are inextricably linked. So it is about something which is second place in the external world. But then another interpolation of the term the nexus is about the analytical challenge. The nexus is a problem for science, because they don't know how to deal with it. So, you could have a series of journal paper that starts saying the nexus is understood as a problem that is impossible to grasp or respond adequately from within the partial framing of individual academic disciplines. The concept consists of multiple discipline, as well as interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research results. The nexus represents a multidimensional means of scientific inquiry, which seeks to describe the complex and nonlinear interaction between water, energy, food with the climate and further understand wider implication for society. So what is the second interpretation? It's a very big problem for scientific analysis. Sustainability problems have been described as wicked problems, so the problems they are impossible to solve using mols. But there is another interpretation of the nexus that is widely used and the nexus as a governance problem. So, the nexus is an issue, a practical issue that society has to deal with which shows that we are not capable of handling it. Basically tell them how to provide a proper governance. And again a lot of paper on this. And then the nexus would require the ability to balance the different goals of interest or the different parties using water, energy, and food. And then the international development community is embracing the notion that the water-energy nexus Is a major policy management concept for sustainable development. And what is the implication? You would need a transparent, integrated and multi-objective plan in order to maintain public trust. Because of course if you are being with something which is very complicated, we don't know and you don't know how to do proper analysis in scientific terms. And it became very difficult to remain credible at the moment of implementing policy. Because people do not trust you that you are doing fair and equitable access to water by different users. So, there are three different elements that can be associated with the nexus. And why I am telling you this is because I am an engineer, so I like all my life to crunch numbers. But a certain point I understood that before crunching numbers we have to think. [LAUGH] And think requires to understand the meaning of the number, the purpose of the number, the context of which you are crunching number. So if you want to do something useful in relation to the NEXUS, you have to understand that one is about action in the external world. And the NEXUS, the big importance, the big fancy activity around the world is indicating that we are not capable of ending properly the integrated management of water, energy, food in the landscape. So we don't know, we have a problem in the nexus. Number 2, in relation to science, we do not know how to represent an effective term the interlinkage between water, energy, and food. And third, in relation to the governance, we do not have the institutions that are capable of coordinating the integrated management into the water. And of course these three elements are related to each other. Just before concluding this introductory section I would like to get into some reflection of complexity. And it's introducing some weird terms that may be will not be very familiar for the majority of you. So I would like to discuss about the semiotic process. The semiotic process is how a society learns how to frame and deal with its problems. In technical terms, semiotics is the study of signs and symbols and how they are used. A semiotic process is a process involving the establishment of a relation between sign in the objective and meaning. Why this esoteric terms have to do with the nexus? Because in reality, when we are studying and representing and perceiving what's happening in a complex system, we have to understand the mechanism to which scientific analysis is produced and used for decision making. So, it is crucial to understand the interplay between the object, what you are studying, the sign, your presentation and the interpreter would be the decision maker that implement the policy. This may seem extremely abstract. But I believe that through this course, if you would manner to decide to remain in this course, we will understand that this is very relevant for the quality of your quantitative analysis. Okay, this is the official definition of semiotic process. You have a sign, these are what the scientist do. Models that are indicators. Then you have the interpretant. They are the decision maker, the one deciding which narrative with explanation is more important, which are the priority. And then is the object is what is happening in the external world. And then what is the problem with the nexus is that we are experiencing process different scale, square meters, kilometers, the globe. And in relation to different dimension, money, social demography, ecological things. And the, Problems are entangled, you cannot solve one without affecting the other. On the other hand, at the moment of doing scientific analysis, we are basically using a very old approach to science. In which we are using representation we are based on one scale and one dimension at a time. And what is worse about all this, is that this process is coming in presence of a legitimate but contrasting values. People have different opinions of what we should do to improve our sustainability, and large doses of uncertainty. We are making models, we are making measurements, but nobody knows exactly how to make models, that are accurate and they can make prediction what's going on. As a matter of fact, we'll see under the next lecture in the next weeks that this is impossible. So another way of framing the semiotic process has been used by Pattee. Again, in complex systems, is that in order to check whether or not you are doing a job with your information, your number. You must have a purpose, and you have to achieve results. And then this is what tells you whether or not you are doing well. And second, you have to believe something to attest to see whether or not you're doing well, and then a learning institution. So someone that is implementing a policy base of the believe and can check whether or not is capable of achieving the purpose. Why this is important? Because exactly this is the problem that we are leaving at the moment with the nexus. We have a problem in the governance. So the institutions that the government long ago or the international government already discussing how to do what they are doing. What are the priorities? More important water is more important, energy. What about climate change, the land use, and how can we restructure the relation amongst these institutions? On the external world, we're adding that the different sectors are interfaced with each other. One is taking water from the other or polluting water or is getting energy or reducing the amount of energy available for the others. And in the scientific world we are basically losing the original idea that science can do everything. You can predict what we lack and define what is the optimal solution for the world for the present generation, future generation. And we are moving to a post-normal science. That is we are doing material analysis, but you admit that there are a lot of uncertainty. Rather than optimal, you have to be wise. And then fairness, adaptability are important parts of the story. In conclusion, I hope that this will not be scary for the majority of you. The concept of the NEXUS is complex and it requires the proper framing in order to be understood. So you cannot start the NEXUS this one this is the question how to solve it. Dealing with the NEXUS is not only about generating better analytical tools or better policy or better institutions of governance. Dealing with the NEXUS is about getting a systemic understanding of the relation among these three elements, what is going on in the external world our ability to represent the relation among the three. And especially how this production and use of scientific information can be tailored to the functioning of institutions. So what we have to do is is to learn how to better produce and use quantitative information. And this is something that we will do in the rest of this course.
