ABSTRACT
Nexus ‘emerged’ at a critical moment against the backdrop of cascading global crises in energy, food and global finance in 2008. These were further amplified by the ‘uncertainties’ brought about by climate change which were slowly becoming visible to the policymakers (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2014). Nexus or interlinked governance across sectors was fronted as a potential solution to the spectre of scarcities in food and energy sectors, and social changes that included population growth, globalisation, economic growth and urbanisation as well as to potentially tackle the anomalies that climate change would bring in future (Hoff, 2011). Some solutions that are proposed in addressing this nexus – i.e. the nexus solutions – tend to gravitate towards a paradigm of control (i.e. stability and durability solutions) in which there is a much higher perception of certainty (Allouche et al., 2014). This proclivity to search for control-oriented solutions for complex systems that are by nature dynamic, ridden with uncertainty and are non-linear may do more harm than good.
