Focus on Interactions: Second Nexus Conference Announced for 2018

The Water Institute at the University of North Carolina has announced that the second Nexus Conference on the theme of Water, Food, Energy and Climate will take place 16-18 April 2018 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Bringing together stakeholders, academics, researchers, and practitioners in government, business, and civil society, the Nexus approach recognises that there is no place in an interlinked world for isolated solutions, and seeks to maximise sectoral expertise while working across boundaries.

The conference will focus on the science-policy interface and reviewing the Sustainable Development Goals commitments- sharing tools, indicators and methodologies to identify solutions, partnerships, and gaps.

The event provides space to discuss and collaborate on some of the major concerns facing policy makers and researchers today, including key challenges like:

Agriculture will have to produce 30-50% more food by 2030
Primary energy needs will increase by 40% by 2030
Demand for water will exceed global availability by 40 % in 2030
Surge of 200 million climate change refugees will reverse global healthcare progress by 2050

Since the 2014 conference there have been significant changes to the landscape the Nexus discourse engages with and the 2018 conference will address three cross cutting areas. These will be:

The urban challenge – where the Nexus trade-offs really become vital to communities and people’s lives
The health-related Nexus issues, recognizing that with climate change these will increase
Migration and mobility as governments and stakeholders start to develop the Global Compact on Migration over the next two years. Nexus issues play a critical role in the increase of migration as food and water become scarce and climate change impacts increasingly have an effect

The Nexus approach mirrors the aspirations of the SDGs and the multi-disciplinary actions required to achieve them. The inaugural conference in 2014 gathered around 300 delegates from 33 countries and led to the Chapel Hill Declaration, a statement on building integrated approaches to the SDGs that was submitted to the UN during the Open Working Group of the General Assembly on Sustainable Development Goals.

Submissions for abstracts are open until 31 October 2017, visit the event page for details and to register.

More information is available on the conference website: