Co-Production of Narratives on Local Nexus Governance to Enhance Adaptive Capacity

This presentation targets Panel 5 - Adaptive Water Governance in Social-Ecological Systems within the Advances in Water Governance Section of the ECPR General Conference 2020. We share conceptual and empirical insights from a transdisciplinary science-for-governance approach developed within the H2020 project ‘MAGIC- Moving Towards Adaptive Governance in Complexity: informing nexus security’. The framework entitled Quantitative Story Telling (QST) is conceptualized as a process of making quality tests on the narratives that underlie or justify the promotion of certain policy options and technological innovations. The quality of the narratives is assessed in terms of their feasibility (within biophysical limits), viability (within the existing institutional and economic context) and/or desirability (reflecting distributional and acceptability issues). The societal metabolism metaphor is used to generate quantitative analyses that provide useful information in regards to these criteria. Relevant actors are engaged from the outset in the identification of narratives and in their assessment, seeking reflexivity on the process and the emergence of new collective narratives about how to move towards desirable and viable futures. We present the operationalization of the approach to assess narratives about the role of alternative water resources (desalination and reclamation) in the water governance context of the Canary Islands (Spain). We uncover a diversity of narratives about current challenges of such technologies with regards to their biophysical impacts, their nexus interconnections with agriculture and energy management, and the adaptation to climate and food market changes. Our results suggest that stronger local nexus governance competences are required to enhance adaptivity in such multi-driver context.