Governance nexus water, energy and food and public spaces for social participation: a study applied to the context of the Cantareira Water Producing System

Abstract

The water, energy and food nexus approach recognize the interconnections between water, energy and food systems and, in order for their integrated management to be efficient and sustainable, proposes that it occur within governance processes. In Brazil, participation spaces for public policy management establish potential institutional arrangements to house the governance nexus. Based on this understanding, one of the most critical contexts for water security in the country was the area of the sources of the Cantareira System. In it, the nexus is understood from the inter-relationships between the production of food (milk and meat), bioenergy (firewood and coal) and water security. The article considers characteristics of public spaces aimed at the participatory management of environmental policies and sustainable rural development to analyze whether their institutional arrangements would allow for a nexus governance process delimited by the area of contribution of the reservoirs of the Cantareira System. For the research, secondary data were used for documental analysis (laws, minutes, technical documents) and primary data collected in interviews with actors who participated in these spaces. The public spaces focused on municipal management councils, the conservation unit councils, and the watershed committee. Despite having desirable characteristics to a process of nexus governance, such as having multiple actors and having a participative character, none of the arrangements analyzed would carry such proposal. In addition to not having as an exclusive scale of action the area of the Cantareira System, these spaces are guided by sectorial objectives and do not engage food and bioenergy producers. Thus, building governance nexus water, energy and food would require efforts to adapt the space that presents the most favorable characteristics, the watershed committee.