The world's human population now constitutes the largest driving force of changes to the biosphere. Emerging water challenges require new ideas for governance and management of water resources in the context of rapid global change. This book presents a new approach to water resources, addressing global sustainability and focusing on socio-ecological resilience to changes. Topics covered include the risks of unexpected change, human impacts and dependence on global water, the prospects for feeding the world's population by 2050, and a pathway for the future. The book's innovative and integrated approach links green and blue freshwater with terrestrial and aquatic ecosystem functions and use. It also links changes arising from land-use alteration with the impacts of those changes on social-ecological systems and ecosystem services. This is an important, state-of-the-art resource for academic researchers and water resource professionals, and a key reference for graduate students studying water resource governance and management.

In recent years the concept of the resource "nexus" has been both hotly debated and widely adopted in research and policy circles. It is a powerful new way to understand and better govern the myriad complex relationships between multiple resources, actors and their security concerns. Particular attention has been paid to water, energy and food interactions, but land and materials emerge as critical too. This comprehensive handbook presents a detailed review of current knowledge about resource nexus-related frameworks, methods and governance, including a broad set of inter-disciplinary perspectives. Written by an international group of scholars and practitioners, the volume focuses on rigorous research, including tools, methods and modelling approaches to analyse resource use patterns across societies and scales from a "nexus perspective". It also provides numerous examples from political economy to demonstrate how resource nexus frameworks can illuminate issues such as land grabs, mining, renewable energy and the growing importance of economies such as China, as well as to propose lessons and outlooks for sound governance. The volume seeks to serve as an essential reference text, source book and state-of-the-art, science-based assessment of this increasingly important topic - the resource nexus - and its utility in efforts to enhance sustainability of many kinds and implement the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals in an era of environmental and geopolitical change.

In recent years the concept of the resource "nexus" has been both hotly debated and widely adopted in research and policy circles. It is a powerful new way to understand and better govern the myriad complex relationships between multiple resources, actors and their security concerns. Particular attention has been paid to water, energy and food interactions, but land and materials emerge as critical too. This comprehensive handbook presents a detailed review of current knowledge about resource nexus-related frameworks, methods and governance, including a broad set of inter-disciplinary perspectives. Written by an international group of scholars and practitioners, the volume focuses on rigorous research, including tools, methods and modelling approaches to analyse resource use patterns across societies and scales from a "nexus perspective". It also provides numerous examples from political economy to demonstrate how resource nexus frameworks can illuminate issues such as land grabs, mining, renewable energy and the growing importance of economies such as China, as well as to propose lessons and outlooks for sound governance. The volume seeks to serve as an essential reference text, source book and state-of-the-art, science-based assessment of this increasingly important topic - the resource nexus - and its utility in efforts to enhance sustainability of many kinds and implement the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals in an era of environmental and geopolitical change.