JPI Urban Europe SUGI: Building capacity for integrated governance at the Food-Water-Energy-nexus in cities on the water

Lead Research Organisation: University of Warwick
Department Name: Centre for Interdisc. Methodologies

Abstract

Major challenges in urban governance concern interlinking food, water and energy systems, making these linkages understandable to all stakeholders (government, science, business, and citizens), and facilitating cooperation and knowledge exchange among them. The project titled "Creating Interfaces" will address these challenges by developing and testing innovative approaches for local knowledge co- creation and participation through Urban Living Labs in three mid-size cities on water: Tulcea, Romania, Wilmington, USA and Slupsk, Poland. Complemented by previous research and a citizen science toolbox, these Labs comprise a user-defined co-creative approach where research questions, problems, and solutions are decided and implemented with stakeholders themselves.

Planned Impact

The project will improve FWE nexus governance and the local visibility and conscience of nexus interlinkages by actively involving diverse user and stakeholder groups through multiple stages of research. Our participatory approach builds on the relationships we have already developed in the three case study areas and the multiple user groups that they contain. Using multi-stage engagements ensures that the research, design and development aspects of the work are sensitive to needs and opportunities at all scales. We have developed an overall approach which aims to increase involvement, connection and understanding within and between user groups. This is especially pertinent at the FWE Nexus, where user group boundaries may be fuzzy, evolving or yet to be activated. For each of these user groups there are concrete deliverables providing value and opportunity yet remain open to opportunities to cut across user needs and catalyze engagements between users groups. The international and inter- and transdisciplinary nature of this project requires and promises strong network building and knowledge transfer across disciplines, sectors, geographical regions and scales. This will be assured by a strong inter- and transdisciplinary integrated project management and a work package dedicated to the systematic synthesis and integration of the results and monitoring of the research process (WP 5).

The project aims at increased consideration and understanding of the systemic nature of the FWE- nexus, on local knowledge co-creation, and on capacity building for innovative and sustainable nexus governance. More precisely it will provide Citizen-Science-Policy interfaces to support decision- making and local policy creation on the FWE-nexus, and bring forth important interdisciplinary knowledge based on rigorous analyses and methodologies integrating local knowledge and local use cases (urban living labs). The outcomes contribute to science and to practice and enable transformative urban governance to promote FWE systems resilience. The project includes a proof- of-concept about the described Citizen-Science-Policy interfaces and their transferability to other contexts. In addition, recommendations will be formulated for potential users including local government, public authorities, or non-governmental organizations.
The concrete results ultimately stem from the local needs and the co-creation process. They include data and knowledge, methodological advances documented in guidelines and reports, an interactive platform and adapted citizen science tools. All addressed stakeholder groups (citizens, policy makers and planners, research, NGOs and practice actors in the FWE-nexus field) can expect concrete results and impacts for their work:
For local stakeholders: Network building, knowledge and understanding of local socio- technical nexus structures, along with tools and guidelines for citizen science, Urban Living Labs (ULL), local needs-based participation, and knowledge co-creation. The cooperative design process will build participation, valuation and science capacities for non-experts. For each ULL, an internet based platform will be created, including interactive tools. Local stakeholders will also collaborate and engage in knowledge transfer with stakeholders from other cities. Stakeholders and citizens will receive new Nexus related information, plus data management tools, visualizations and other material for communication, exchange and decision making, along with the opportunity to contribute their own needs, questions and knowledge. Small and medium cities often do not have the capacities to actively participate in international networking and exchange and face a lack of resources for capacity building. The goal is to experiment with tools adapted to such contexts yet transferable to other cities, and to international standardization and sustainable/smart cities initiatives (see dissemination).

Publications

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Description Major challenges in urban governance concern interlinking food, water and energy systems, making these linkages understandable to all stakeholders (government, science, business, and citizens), and facilitating cooperation and knowledge exchange among them. The project "Creating Interfaces" has addressed these challenges by developing and testing innovative approaches for local knowledge co-creation and participation about the Food-Water-Energy (FWE) nexus through Urban Living Labs in three mid-size cities on water: Tulcea, Romania, Wilmington, USA and Slupsk, Poland. Complemented by previous research and a citizen science toolbox, these Labs comprise a user-defined co-creative approach where research questions, problems, and solutions are decided and implemented with stakeholders themselves.

The focus of the project has been on building local capacity in knowledge creation and knowledge governance through innovative approaches, creating interfaces between science, citizens and policy/planning as well as between FWE components. It has been carried out by an international consortium and the current reporting focus on the main contributions of the UK component, which are focused on the Work Package 4 - Citizen-science-policy interfaces: Activating nexus interfaces through visualization.
The core objective of this component of the project was to develop data visualizations and a decision support tool that activate interactions around the FWE Nexus. Our approach considers the Nexus as a composite of potential and realized interactions that might be more traditionally considered as science-policy, citizen-science and policy-citizen interfaces. We have approached the visualization design in terms of 'connecting literacies' (e.g. visual literacy, numeracy, technicity, knowledge cultures and vocabularies) in order to support new institutional, cultural, social and epistemic connections that increase 'involvement', 'connection' and 'understanding'. In developing a set of connected visual media that span the digital arts and decision support tools, our goal was to activate the FWE Nexus as an ecosystem of knowledge and information, but also experience and relationships.

Since the international consortium had the project extended to June/2022 the findings presented here are preliminary, as we are still working with the international partners, even if the ESRC funded component was not allowed to be extended to match the new duration of the project for the international partners.

1. A typology for visual representations of the Food-Water-Energy Nexus

The scientific literature has discussed extensively the need to highlight the inter-relationships and inter-dependences between food, water and energy, leading to the creation of the concept of the Food-Water-Energy (FWE) nexus. Our first step in the project was to investigate how the FWE nexus concept has been encoded visually in previous studies of different disciplines, as well as what the visual representations imply or induce.
Resulting from this analysis, our key finding was to define a typology of visualisations of the nexus, which consists of five basic types:
(1) FWE as a conceptual nexus: visuals that express conceptual relationships (e.g., connection, interdependence) between the components of food, water and energy (e.g., a conceptual diagram).
(2) FWE as a spatial nexus: the few nexus is related to specific places and spaces, relying upon geographic representations of the positional relations between components (e.g., a map).
(3) FWE as a temporal nexus: the temporal evolution of different components of the FWE nexus co-ocurring are depicted across time, usually leading to an interpretation of co-relation and interdepence of trajectories over time (e.g., line charts).
(4) FEW as a nexus of quantified flows: the material flows between different components of the nexus is expressed visually in order to depict their inter-connections (e.g., in a Sankey diagram).
(5) FEW nexus as an emergent property: the nexus is encoded as a visual element that results from the composition of food, water and energy elements (e.g., a resulting area in a radar plot).
This analysis has helped us to three key insights on the limitations of previous studies. First, the role of visualisation is often limited to illustration without a systematic way of justifying visualisation choices. Second, the existence of a myriad of approaches and visualisation types used to represent the FEW nexus evidence that there is not a single FEW nexus, but multiple ways in which FEW are conceptualised and visually encoded. Third, despite the efforts in making the FEW nexus more understandable by employing visual representations, the resulting nexus is often still abstract and difficult to relate to elements of the local contexts and day-to-day life of citizens, especially for non-academics.

2. A process for the co-design of visualisations of the Food-Water-Energy nexus

In order to address the shortcomings identified before, we developed an innovative method to engage end-users and researchers from multiple disciplines to co-design FWE visualisations. We co-produced this method with researchers and practitioners of the Creating Interfaces consortium using the methodology of Urban Living Labs in our three case studies: food choices in kindergartens in Slupsk (Poland), food waste in Wilmington (United States of America) and food production in Tulcea (Romania).
Our co-design process draws on critical pedagogy and critical data literacy to adapt the agile software development processes. Drawing on the critical pedagogy of Paulo Freire, we reconceptualise the process of designing FEW nexus visualisations as an opportunity to generate a critical consciousness about the local realities of stakeholders and how they are connected to food, water and energy. The goal was to provide a new perspective on the nexus between day-to-day choices and experiences and their socio-ecological implications to the nexus between food, water and energy.

In doing this, we co-designed a set of visualisations of the FWE nexus and a prototype interactive decision support tool with an interactive visualisation. Our case studies have demonstrated the effectiviness of our co-design method and the resulting visuals to change perceptions and behaviours of stakeholders. The vast majority of the participants of our Urban Living Labs reported having acquired a better understanding of the interconnections and impacts between food, water and energy through the interaction with the visualisation tool. Going even further, a significant result reported is that participants learned about specific decisions they can make in their food choices to minimise their socio-ecological impact while also ensuring that their choices are healthy for their children (e.g., reducing the number of meals that have ingredients from an animal origin or requesting for locally produced ingredients when possible). This, combined with the fact that some of the attendees were members of the local governments (e.g., city council), has opened the door to ongoing work on elaborating policy recommendations at a city level regarding food choices in kindergartens based on the findings and feedback of the ULL resulting from the interaction with the tool.
Exploitation Route The new method we developed for co-designing visualisations of the Food-Water-Energy nexus based on a transdisciplinary approach can be used to strengthen interfaces between science and policy, as well as to change perceptions and practices towards improving socio-ecological impacts of day-to-day choices. It will also serve as a basis for future research to further understand the perceptions of citizens and stakeholders about how their local contexts can be rethought through seeing them through the lens of the Food-Water-Energy nexus.
Sectors Communities and Social Services/Policy

Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software)

Education

Environment

Government

Democracy and Justice

 
Description The development of our innovative method for co-designing visualisations of the Food-Water-Energy Nexus was done in close partnership with practitioners and end-users of different stakeholder groups within the Urban Living Labs of our three case studies: parents and teachers in kindergartens in Slupsk (Poland), community members and public authorities concerned with food waste in Wilmington (United States of America) and food producers in Tulcea (Romania) (Camára-Menoyo et al., 2024). Our practitioner partners and end-users have reported that these engagements led to changes in perceptions and behaviours towards more sustainable choices around food consumption, food waste management and food production choices. We are currently working with our international partners to follow up on these early indications of impact, generating evidence of the benefits acquired and synthesising policy recommendations to extend impact. In Slupsk, Poland, we collected evidence that our co-design process has been effective in developing a new critical consciousness in the participants about how their everyday choices are related to the FWE nexus, enabling them to change perspectives, leading to more sustainable choices. Our study documents three scenarios where perception changes toward the FWE Nexus were observed. First, a vast majority of participants reported not having prior knowledge about the FWE Nexus, whilst a majority declared to have acquired increased awareness of the implications of food choices for the environment (energy and water) after the participatory process. Second, some participants specifically reported having learnt more about specific decisions they can make regarding their food choices to minimise their impact while offering healthy options for their children. These two types of knowledge gained by participants are associated with changes in their perceptions about the FWE nexus, since they acquired a different perception of how different aspects of the food, water and energy systems in their environment are connected among themselves and impacted by their own choices and actions. Third, the lessons learnt from the process and the interactions with our tool enabled discussions outlining possible actions towards sustainable food procurement choices, from the individual scale to the city level. The city council representatives who participated in our study saw an opportunity to scale up the pilot to other institutions, which is indicative of them having changed their perceptions about the importance of considering the FWE Nexus in policy and practice. Furthermore, the combination of these observations suggests that some action following the process is to be expected, even if it still needs to be empirically verified.
First Year Of Impact 2022
Sector Agriculture, Food and Drink,Communities and Social Services/Policy,Education,Government, Democracy and Justice
Impact Types Societal

Policy & public services

 
Description Data and Displacement: Assessing the Practical and Ethical Implications of Targeting Humanitarian Protection
Amount £475,524 (GBP)
Funding ID AH/T007516/1 
Organisation Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC) 
Sector Public
Country United Kingdom
Start 09/2020 
End 03/2023
 
Description IDEAMAPS: A participatory data-modeling ecosystem for deprived area map production in LMIC cities
Amount $1,690,337 (USD)
Funding ID INV-045252 
Organisation Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation 
Sector Charity/Non Profit
Country United States
Start 09/2022 
End 09/2025
 
Description Teaching for Digital Citizenship: Digital ethics in the classroom and beyond it.
Amount £601,560 (GBP)
Funding ID ES/X002756/1 
Organisation Economic and Social Research Council 
Sector Public
Country United Kingdom
Start 12/2022 
End 11/2025
 
Title Visualisation tool for a grounded FEW Nexus (includes associated datasets) 
Description An open source prototype for a visual interface to support research and Food-Water-Energy Nexus engagements, designed collaborativelly as part of Creating interfaces' WP4, developed by the Institute for Global Sustainable Development at the University of Warwick, and aimed to identify and visualise a grounded nexus for three different study cases: Kindergartens in Slupsk (Poland), food waste in Wilmington (USA) and local producers in Tulcea (Romania). The expectation of this tool is to provide an interface to increase the understanding of how food, energy and water are interlinked in a specific context and, ultimately, to inform and support decision-making aimed to produce changes in behaviours that have positive impacts in terms of Food, Energy and Water. 
Type Of Material Improvements to research infrastructure 
Year Produced 2022 
Provided To Others? Yes  
Impact Our study documents three scenarios where perception changes toward the FWE Nexus were observed with the usage of our visualisation tool (Camára-Menoyo et al. 2024). First, a vast majority of participants reported not having prior knowledge about the FWE Nexus, whilst a majority declared to have acquired increased awareness of the implications of food choices for the environment (energy and water) after the participatory process. Second, some participants specifically reported having learnt more about specific decisions they can make regarding their food choices to minimise their impact while offering healthy options for their children. These two types of knowledge gained by participants are associated with changes in their perceptions about the FWE nexus, since they acquired a different perception of how different aspects of the food, water and energy systems in their environment are connected among themselves and impacted by their own choices and actions. This is related to their capacity to identify and understand cross-domain relationships and to apply the FWE nexus concept at the local level, which has been suggested by Huntington et al. (2021) as a pathway for long-term sustainability. Third, the lessons learnt from the process and the interactions with our tool enabled discussions outlining possible actions towards sustainable food procurement choices, from the individual scale to city level. The city council representatives who participated in our study saw an opportunity to scale up the pilot to other institutions, which is indicative of them having changed their perceptions about the importance of considering the FWE Nexus in policy and practice. Furthermore, the combination of these observations suggests that some action following the process is to be expected, as outlined in Table 5, even if it still needs to be empirically verified. 
URL https://zenodo.org/records/6566159
 
Description 52° North Initiative for Geospatial Open Source Software GmbH 
Organisation 52 North Initiative for Geospatial Open Source Software GmbH
Country Germany 
Sector Charity/Non Profit 
PI Contribution This is a Belmont Forum / JPI Urban Europe consortium project with each partner bringing their own funding. We have collaborated together on project delivery and outputs.
Collaborator Contribution This is a Belmont Forum / JPI Urban Europe consortium project with each partner bringing their own funding. We have collaborated together on project delivery and outputs.
Impact This is a Belmont Forum / JPI Urban Europe consortium project with each partner bringing their own funding. We have collaborated together on project delivery and outputs.
Start Year 2018
 
Description Danube Delta National Institute for Research and Development (DDNI) 
Organisation Danube Delta National Institute for Research and Development
Country Romania 
Sector Public 
PI Contribution This is a Belmont Forum / Urban Europe consortium project with each partner bringing their own funding. We have collaborated together on project delivery and outputs.
Collaborator Contribution This is a Belmont Forum / Urban Europe consortium project with each partner bringing their own funding. We have collaborated together on project delivery and outputs.
Impact This is a Belmont Forum / Urban Europe consortium project with each partner bringing their own funding. We have collaborated together on project delivery and outputs.
Start Year 2018
 
Description EIFER 
Organisation European Institute for Energy Research
Country Germany 
Sector Charity/Non Profit 
PI Contribution This is a Belmont Forum / Urban Europe project consortium. EIFER are the main applicant / project coordinator and their funding agency is BMBF. They have received funds for the project but non have flowed to us.
Collaborator Contribution This is a Belmont Forum / Urban Europe project consortium. EIFER are the main applicant / project coordinator and their funding agency is BMBF. They have received funds for the project but non have flowed to us.
Impact All project outcomes can be linked toe EIFER as the PI.
Start Year 2018
 
Description Nicolaus Copernicus University (NCU), Institute of Sociology 
Organisation Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun
Country Poland 
Sector Academic/University 
PI Contribution This is a Belmont Forum / Urban Europe consortium project with each partner bringing their own funding. We have collaborated together on project delivery and outputs.
Collaborator Contribution This is a Belmont Forum / Urban Europe consortium project with each partner bringing their own funding. We have collaborated together on project delivery and outputs.
Impact This is a Belmont Forum / Urban Europe consortium project with each partner bringing their own funding. We have collaborated together on project delivery and outputs.
Start Year 2018
 
Description Plantagon International AB (Plantagon) 
Organisation Plantagon International AB
Country Sweden 
Sector Private 
PI Contribution This is a Belmont Forum / JPI Urban Europe consortium project with each partner bringing their own funding. We have collaborated together on project delivery and outputs.
Collaborator Contribution This is a Belmont Forum / JPI Urban Europe consortium project with each partner bringing their own funding. We have collaborated together on project delivery and outputs.
Impact This is a Belmont Forum / JPI Urban Europe consortium project with each partner bringing their own funding. We have collaborated together on project delivery and outputs.
Start Year 2018
 
Description Pracownia Zrownowazonego Rozwoju 
Organisation Sustainable Development Laboratory (PZR)
Country Poland 
Sector Charity/Non Profit 
PI Contribution This is a Belmont Forum / JPI Urban Europe consortium project with each partner bringing their own funding. We have collaborated together on project delivery and outputs.
Collaborator Contribution This is a Belmont Forum / JPI Urban Europe consortium project with each partner bringing their own funding. We have collaborated together on project delivery and outputs.
Impact This is a Belmont Forum / JPI Urban Europe consortium project with each partner bringing their own funding. We have collaborated together on project delivery and outputs.
Start Year 2018
 
Description Royal Institute of Technology, Department of Sustainable Development, Environmental Science and Engineering (SEED) 
Organisation Royal Institute of Technology
Country Sweden 
Sector Academic/University 
PI Contribution This is a Belmont Forum / JPI Urban Europe consortium project with each partner bringing their own funding. We have collaborated together on project delivery and outputs.
Collaborator Contribution This is a Belmont Forum / JPI Urban Europe consortium project with each partner bringing their own funding. We have collaborated together on project delivery and outputs.
Impact This is a Belmont Forum / JPI Urban Europe consortium project with each partner bringing their own funding. We have collaborated together on project delivery and outputs.
Start Year 2018
 
Description University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) 
Organisation University Corporation for Atmospheric Research
Country United States 
Sector Academic/University 
PI Contribution This is a Belmont Forum / Urban Europe consortium project with each partner bringing their own funding. We have collaborated together on project delivery and outputs.
Collaborator Contribution This is a Belmont Forum / Urban Europe consortium project with each partner bringing their own funding. We have collaborated together on project delivery and outputs.
Impact We have collaborated together on project delivery and outputs.
Start Year 2018
 
Description University of Delaware, School of Public Policy and Administration (SPPA) 
Organisation University of Delaware
Country United States 
Sector Academic/University 
PI Contribution This is a Belmont Forum / Urban Europe consortium project with each partner bringing their own funding. We have collaborated together on project delivery and outputs.
Collaborator Contribution This is a Belmont Forum / Urban Europe consortium project with each partner bringing their own funding. We have collaborated together on project delivery and outputs.
Impact This is a Belmont Forum / Urban Europe consortium project with each partner bringing their own funding. We have collaborated together on project delivery and outputs.
Start Year 2018
 
Title Interactive Food-Energy-Water visualisation tool 
Description An open source prototype for a visual interface to support research and Nexus engagements, designed collaborativelly as part of Creating interfaces' WP4, developed by the Institute for Global Sustainable Development at the University of Warwick, and aimed to identify and visualise a grounded nexus for three different study cases: Kindergartens in Slupsk (Poland), food waste in Wilmington (USA) and local producers in Tulcea (Romania). The expectation of this tool is to provide an interface to increase the understanding of how food, energy and water are interlinked in a specific context and, ultimately, to inform and support decision-making aimed to produce changes in behaviours that have positive impacts in terms of Food, Energy and Water. 
Type Of Technology Webtool/Application 
Year Produced 2021 
Open Source License? Yes  
Impact The tool has been presented to and used by local stakeholders as part of three Urban Living Labs. The last part of those ULL consisted in assessing the tools in terms of use of use, contents and impacts produced. Participants reported... Part of those results is being published as a specific paper that highlights the benefits and impacts of the tool. 
URL https://github.com/IGSD-UoW/wfenexus_demo
 
Title Visualisation tool for a grounded FEW Nexus 
Description An open source prototype for a visual interface to support research and Food-Water-Energy Nexus engagements, designed collaborativelly as part of Creating interfaces' WP4, developed by the Institute for Global Sustainable Development at the University of Warwick, and aimed to identify and visualise a grounded nexus for three different study cases: Kindergartens in Slupsk (Poland), food waste in Wilmington (USA) and local producers in Tulcea (Romania). The expectation of this tool is to provide an interface to increase the understanding of how food, energy and water are interlinked in a specific context and, ultimately, to inform and support decision-making aimed to produce changes in behaviours that have positive impacts in terms of Food, Energy and Water. The visualisation tool can be seen in the following links: Food choices in Kindergartens (Slupsk): Dashboard in English Food choices in Kindergartens (Slupsk): Dashboard in Polish Food waste in the USA (Wilmington): Scrollytelling Food producers (Tulcea): Map and dashboard (WIP) 
Type Of Technology Software 
Year Produced 2022 
Impact This tool has been evaluated within a cross-sectoral workshop in Slupsk, Poland reported in Camára-Menyo et al. (2024). After using the tool to conclude the tasks we proposed around the connections to the FWE nexus, the general evaluation of the tool and datasets was very positive. Workshop participants pointed to several concrete possibilities for the practical use of the data presented by the tool. On an individual level, users pointed to the visualisation tool's importance for expanding citizens' food knowledge and awareness, and the possibility of building local food knowledge from the bottom-up, for example by adding information about local producers in the future. 
URL https://zenodo.org/doi/10.5281/zenodo.6566158
 
Description Presentation at the "Meet the Mayors" session of the Sustainability Research and Innovation Conference 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Policymakers/politicians
Results and Impact Presentation entitled: "Local Knowledge Co-Creation at the Food-Water-Energy Nexus" as a pitch for the "Meet the Mayors" Session of the Sustainability Research & Innovation Congress, on the 14th of June 2021. This was intended as a knowledge exchange from projects participating in the Belmont Forum/JPI SUGI programme and city policy makers, discussing research results and implications to practice.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2021
 
Description Symposium on the Food-Water-Energy Nexus (presentation) 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Our aim was twofold: 1) to present the work developed in WP4 in its current status in order to present it to the public and get input that would improve our work; 2) get to know similar researches that can complement our work.
11 people attended to our presentation about the co-creating process of an interactive tool for visualising Food-Energy-Water nexus and the progress and results we have had so far. We received questions from the audience, who was interested in our approach and results.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2021
URL https://www.hft-stuttgart.com/smart-city-week/in-source
 
Description Visualisation workshop with stakeholders (virtual) 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Workshop engaged project partners including academic and non-academic audiences. There was around 25 attendees and the workshop adopted a semi-structured approach to support future planning and attain information/feedback on the design, development and implementation of visualisation tools to be designed within WP4.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2020
 
Description Workshop: Governance & Capacity building - Urban 'Food-Energy-Water Nexus' 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Representatives of municipalities, the private sector, academia, and local citizens attended to the workshop. Round tables where held after the presentations made by different partners of the project aimed to provide insights into experiences and lessons learned and support the exchange and networking regarding initiatives for local resilience and sustainability governance. In every round table, groups were created to discuss how different tools and methods can complement each other for a more sustainable and resilient community and conclusions were later shared with the large group.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2021
URL https://www.eventbrite.com/e/workshop-governance-capacity-building-urban-food-energy-water-nexus-tic...