Conference Topics

Background

Climate change, exploitation of resources, environmental degradation, poor waste management, rapid urbanization, geopolitical instability, and growing social inequalities are deeply intertwined global challenges that constantly interact to amplify global risks. Together, these compounding and cascading crises place unprecedented strain on vital natural resources and the societal systems that depend on them.

Water, energy, food, land, and ecosystems are deeply interconnected. Decisions made in one sector inevitably generate cascading effects across others, spanning multiple spatial and temporal scales. Climate change puts additional strain, which leads to further complexities. In this context, nexus approaches have emerged as an essential framework for understanding these complex interdependencies and for managing the resulting tradeoffs and synergies in an integrated, sustainable manner.

However, the complexity of today’s dynamic world calls for a critical rethinking of how nexus approaches are conceptualized and applied. While nexus thinking has significantly advanced our understanding of interconnected resource systems, translating these theoretical insights into operational management and effective governance remains a major challenge. Technical interconnections alone are not enough to explain resource dynamics or guide sustainable solutions. Questions of inclusive governance, climate resilience, power relations, and the ability to accurately quantify and model these systems through robust data are equally crucial for shaping equitable outcomes. To respond effectively, there is an urgent need for approaches that are transdisciplinary, evidence-based, and grounded in both scientific rigor and societal realities.

Themes

Water security is increasingly recognized not as an isolated challenge, but as a critical outcome of complex, interconnected resource systems. While water is fundamental for sustaining life, agricultural and industrial production, and energy generation, the competing demands from these sectors, coupled with changing climate and land use and ecosystem degradation, place unprecedented pressure on water availability and quality. Yet, resource management practices often remain confined to sectoral silos, leading to operational inefficiencies, resource depletion, and unintended physical consequences across the nexus. These compounding pressures frequently unfold across diverse spatial scales and ecosystems, making traditional, single-sector management approaches insufficient to ensure long-term water security.

This conference topic focuses on integrated management strategies and operational solutions that actively safeguard water resources. It invites contributions that explore practical, conceptual, technological, and ecological approaches to balancing competing water demands while managing physical synergies and trade-offs across sectors. Relevant themes may include integrated resource planning, climate-resilient infrastructure, nature-based solutions for watershed protection, circular water-energy-food systems, and technological innovations to optimize water-use efficiency in agriculture, waste management and energy production.

The topic encourages participants to examine how operationalizing nexus-driven solutions can move beyond theoretical frameworks to actively enhance water security on the ground. It seeks insights into overcoming the practical challenges of integrated management, optimizing physical infrastructure, and translating nexus interdependencies into effective operational strategies and sustainable management practices in diverse geographic and environmental settings.

Resource management challenges are not only technical but deeply political and institutional – a reality increasingly amplified by the frequency and intensity of climate extremes. As droughts, floods, and heatwaves place unprecedented stress on interconnected resource systems, access to water, energy, food, land, and ecosystems is profoundly shaped by governance structures, power relations, institutional fragmentation, and unequal participation in decision-making processes. Navigating these compounding crises requires moving beyond traditional, top-down approaches to embrace collaborative problem-solving.

This conference topic addresses the governance dimensions of nexus thinking and explores transdisciplinary pathways for more resilient, inclusive, sustainable resource and waste management. It welcomes contributions on institutional coordination, multi-level governance, policy coherence, rights-based approaches, gender and social equity, and conflict and cooperation. Crucially, it highlights the need for transdisciplinary by integrating scientific research with policy-making and local, indigenous, and traditional knowledge to co-produce actionable solutions. Attention is given to how governance
systems can adapt to climate shocks, navigate deep uncertainty, and manage competing interests and cross-sectoral trade-offs under extreme conditions.

By focusing on inclusive governance and transdisciplinary action, this topic seeks to better understand how decision-making processes can support the equitable, transparent, and effective management of interconnected resources. Ultimately, it encourages participants to examine how robust institutional frameworks and collaborative pathways can overcome fragmentation and build societal resilience in an era of climate extremes and rapid transformation.

Understanding and managing complex resource interdependencies require robust analytical tools capable of capturing dynamic interactions across sectors, spatial scales, and time horizons. Data and modelling play a critical role in quantifying these connections, assessing cross-sectoral trade-offs, exploring future scenarios, and supporting evidence-based decision-making within nexus approaches. At the same time, significant challenges remain regarding data availability and integration, handling deep uncertainty, resolving scale mismatches, and effectively translating complex model outputs into actionable insights for policy and practice.

This conference topic focuses on quantitative and analytical approaches to decoding interconnected resource systems. It invites contributions that utilize data-driven and conceptual methodologies, integrated assessment models, system dynamics, spatial analysis, remote sensing, scenario development, digital tools, and advanced decision-support systems. Submissions should aim to quantify interdependencies across water, energy, food, land, and ecosystems, while integrating related compounding factors such as climate change, land-use dynamics, and health.

Ultimately, the topic aims to explore how cutting-edge advances in data and modelling such as AI and big data can improve the rigorous analysis of resource interdependencies. It encourages participants to demonstrate how robust quantification can support strategic planning under uncertainty, bridge the gap between scientific modeling and real-world application, and provide a strong evidence base to inform integrated resource management and governance.