The governance of the water-energy nexus: Co-produced narratives to take stock and address energy dependencies of the urban water cycle in Atlantic Europe

Abstract

Water and energy (WE) are key resources to support human well-being and are highly interconnected. Intensifying demands of both resources and increasing resource scarcity are exacerbating their interconnectedness and calling for the adoption of an integrated approach called “WE nexus”. This paper explores the barriers and opportunities to govern the WE nexus in the Urban Water Cycle (UWC), particularly, the energy dependencies of the water supply and sanitation services in Atlantic Europe, through the assessment of four contrasting and representative regions: Canary Islands (ES), Western Andalusia (ES), Alentejo (PT) and Brittany (FR). We applied a “Quantitative Story Telling (QST)” method to assess the discourses from 49 stakeholders from across the four regions on WE nexus challenges and opportunities in the UWC, and the evidence that exists on them. The result is a pluralistic narrative incorporating the views of different stakeholders on what are the issues at stake and why, what needs to be done and how, and sustained by available data. The resulting narrative explores the formal aspects underpinning WE nexus governance in the UWC, but also informal rules linked to political economy. Our results revealed that WE nexus challenges are context-specific, however, there are important commonalities across regions and phases of the UWC value chain, suggesting that these are relevant at the Atlantic Europe scale. QST is not instrumental in directly inducing policy change or decision-making, but might be a valuable means for knowledge mobilization to question and enrich the quality of dominant discourses, and thus paving the road for action towards sustainability.