The United States-Colombia Water, Energy and Food Nexus Alliance seeks to be a platform to build and maintain a community of researchers, provide technical infrastructure, coordinate partnerships and commitments, integrate education at different levels, and support communication strategies in the Western Hemisphere. . Research conducted under the Alliance emphasizes renewable energy, agricultural development, river basin resilience, and biodiversity and natural resource conservation as solutions to some of the most pressing problems facing Colombia, Latin America, and the world. The Alliance serves as a unifying umbrella for academic researchers, industry representatives, civil society, and policymakers. Integrating efforts across institutions enables researchers to better collect and analyze primary data, create and apply predictive and scenario planning models, and develop and disseminate best practices for more effective program implementation.
In this context, throughout the week of the workshop, on Friday, July 15, a panel was held focused on the problem of how to integrate the Nexus approach into the policies developed in the region. The conference was opened by Siela Maximova, who in addition to being director of Penn State Global for Latin America and the Caribbean, is a professor in the Department of Plant Science at Pennsylvania State University. Then, the panel was moderated by Roberto Villalobos, professor at the Faculty of Agricultural Sciences of the National University of Colombia. In addition to having the ECLAC consultant, Elisa Blanco, the panel included the participation of Marcela Andino, advisor to the Water Authority of the Province of Mendoza, and Michael Jacobson, Professor of the Department of Ecosystem Sciences and Management, of Penn State University.
In this way, ECLAC presented the “Methodological Guide: design of actions with a focus on the Nexus between water, energy and food for countries of Latin America and the Caribbean”. This guide consists of a practical tool that will support the countries of the region in the adoption and evaluation of the Nexus in the policies, plans, programs and projects of the water, energy, agriculture and environment sectors. In addition to presenting the methodological tool, its practical application was presented through the experience of different Latin American cases. Finally, a space for questions and answers was opened, in which it was possible to enter the debate regarding the relevance of having scientific evidence of the benefits of implementing policies with a Nexus approach in the region.
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