The first Nexus Network workshop Improving decisions at the food, water, energy and environment nexus: values and valuation, led by Professor Ian Bateman from the University of East Anglia, was held on Friday 28 November 2014. The workshop brought together 50 people from government, the business sector and wider society together with researchers in this field to promote understanding and explore practical solutions to the challenges of decision making in this area. Download the Report from28Nov2014_Nexus NetworkWorkshopValuesandValuation
Participants in the workshop identified key challenges to business and policy decision-making in the nexus area:
- The challenge of working across disciplines and across sectors
The need for interdisciplinary thinking and expertise aligned with a desire to overcome siloed thinking by finding the commonalities which link different sections and interests.
- Innovation challenges
Focussing upon novel applications which encourage innovation and connections across disciplines.
- Nexus resource challenges
The nexus challenge is to resolve conflicts and exploit synergies in the interactions between food, energy and managing the environment for nature, conservation, access and aesthetics.
- Challenges of refining and using tools and methods
Method refinement needs improved science basis and to balance different conceptions of value, e.g. in valuing biodiversity. We also need improved techniques for robust measurement of valuations for non-market goods.
- Decision-making challenges
The need to clarify the objectives for decision making; improving and accessing monetary valuations; addressing the limits of valuation and tackling the fact that the Nexus issues of biodiversity, floods and water are a massive interaction of policies which need increased coordination.
- Governance challenges
How can we bring open policy/ valuation/ deliberative processes into new devolution/ localism debates and systems and see past short-term political cycles?
- Communication and engagement challenges
Making use of current research and knowledge and identifying where and what type of new knowledge is required.
- Behaviour change challenges
Clarifying actual versus presumed behaviour of stakeholders/ public and demonstrating the value of improved information about human preferences and how this might influence behaviour change.
- Impacts on society
What is the place of distributional concerns within environmental policy?
- Implementation and action challenges
How do we achieve actions now?
Participants then adopted 2 key challenges per table and identified the research needed to address these. The research questions are summarised in the report and a full list of all the challenges and research questions is available in the report appendix.
With many thanks to all the people who took part in the stimulating discussions on the day.
download the full report of the ‘values and valuation’ workshop.
You can download the Report from28Nov2014_Nexus NetworkWorkshopValuesandValuation
Download more information on the event:
- Agenda Agenda_NexusNetworkworkshop_28November2014 (downloads pdf)
- Speaker biogs Speaker biogs_NexusNetworkworkshop_28Nov2014 (downloads pdf)
- Look at the pdfs of the speakers talks – you can select the talks to look at on the Speakers Talks page
- Delegate list Delegate list_Nexus Network_28Novworkshopv24Nov (downloads pdf)
Image credit: the delightful design was created by one of the workshop delegates (if you would like be credited in person, please contact Ruth on r.welters@uea.ac.uk).
