Research priorities for managing the impacts and dependencies of business upon food, energy, water and the environment

Green, Jonathan M. H., Cranston, Gemma R., Sutherland, William J., Tranter, Hannah R., Bell, Sarah J., Benton, Tim G., Blixt, Eva, Bowe, Colm, Broadley, Sarah, Brown, Andrew, Brown, Chris, Burns, Neil, Butler, David, Collins, Hannah, Crowley, Helen, DeKoszmovszky, Justin, Firbank, Les G., Fulford, Brett, Gardner, Toby A., Hails, Rosemary S., Halvorson, Sharla, Jack, Michael, Kerrison, Ben, Koh, Lenny S. C., Lang, Steven C., McKenzie, Emily J., Monsivais, Pablo, O'Riordan, Timothy, Osborn, Jeremy, Oswald, Stephen, Price Thomas, Emma, Raffaelli, David, Reyers, Belinda, Srai, Jagjit S., Strassburg, Bernardo B. N., Webster, David, Welters, Ruth, Whiteman, Gail, Wilsdon, James and Vira, Bhaskar (2017) Research priorities for managing the impacts and dependencies of business upon food, energy, water and the environment. Sustainability Science, 12 (2). 319–331. ISSN 1862-4065

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Abstract

Delivering access to sufficient food, energy and water resources to ensure human wellbeing is a major concern for governments worldwide. However, it is crucial to account for the ‘nexus’ of interactions between these natural resources and the consequent implications for human wellbeing. The private sector has a critical role in driving positive change towards more sustainable nexus management and could reap considerable benefits from collaboration with researchers to devise solutions to some of the foremost sustainability challenges of today. Yet opportunities are missed because the private sector is rarely involved in the formulation of deliverable research priorities. We convened senior research scientists and influential business leaders to collaboratively identify the top forty questions that, if answered, would best help companies understand and manage their food-energy-water-environment nexus dependencies and impacts. Codification of the top order nexus themes highlighted research priorities around development of pragmatic yet credible tools that allow businesses to incorporate nexus interactions into their decision-making; demonstration of the business case for more sustainable nexus management; identification of the most effective levers for behaviour change; and understanding incentives or circumstances that allow individuals and businesses to take a leadership stance. Greater investment in the complex but productive relations between the private sector and research community will create deeper and more meaningful collaboration and cooperation.

Item Type: Article
Additional Information: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
Uncontrolled Keywords: corporate sustainability,nexus interactions,environment,food security,energy security,water security,sdg 2 - zero hunger,sdg 7 - affordable and clean energy,sdg 12 - responsible consumption and production ,/dk/atira/pure/sustainabledevelopmentgoals/zero_hunger
Faculty \ School: Faculty of Science > School of Environmental Sciences

University of East Anglia Research Groups/Centres > Theme - ClimateUEA
UEA Research Groups: Faculty of Science > Research Centres > Centre for Social and Economic Research on the Global Environment (CSERGE)
Faculty of Science > Research Groups > Resources, Sustainability and Governance (former - to 2018)
Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Centres > Water Security Research Centre
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Depositing User: Pure Connector
Date Deposited: 28 Oct 2016 11:00
Last Modified: 20 Mar 2023 12:38
URI: https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/61147
DOI: 10.1007/s11625-016-0402-4

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