Context and purpose of this Consultation

The 2012 European Report on Development (ERD), the third such report to be published by the EU, will focus on how natural resource management can promote sustainable and inclusive growth. Within this overall theme the report will start from a contextual analysis of increasing scarcity and the effects of climate change, and will explore the actual and possible roles of public and private actors (both for-profit and non-profit) as they engage in the management of water, energy and land in order to promote inclusive and sustainable growth. The ERD outline argues that increased scarcity has highlighted the existence of a water-energy-land (WEL) nexus, which suggests that appropriate natural resource management needs to be integrated and take into account the interdependencies amongst resources.

The report will have the following structure: Chapters 2 and 3 will set out the new context for natural resource management (scarcity, climate change) and chapter 4 will outline the analytical framework. Chapters 5, 6 and 7 will provide specific case-study analysis on land, water and energy issues related to the nexus. Chapters 8 and 9 will in turn look at the contributions that the private sector (in its broadest sense) and the public sector (at different levels) make to the governance and management of land, water and energy. Finally, Chapter 10 will look at roles for the EU to play in the context of the report.

The ERD 2012 has already been discussed in a series of consultation meetings in London, Brussels and Maastricht earlier this year. The main purpose of this consultation event in Bonn was to inform the analysis and writing process of the report, particularly chapters 6 (Water) and 7 (Energy). Various academic authors have been commissioned to write background papers for the ERD and a number of these were invited to come and present their ideas to the consultation.