TY - JOUR
T1 - Co-creating sustainability indicators for the local water-energy-food nexus
AU - Moreira, Fabiano de Araujo
AU - Dalla Fontana, Michele
AU - Sepe, Patricia Marra
AU - Lopes, Mathews Vichr
AU - Moura, Lucas do Vale
AU - Medeiros, Larissa Santos
AU - de Kraker, Joop
AU - Malheiros, Tadeu Fabricio
AU - Di Giulio, Gabriela Marques
N1 - data source:
PY - 2022/11
Y1 - 2022/11
N2 - Sustainability indicators have become essential tools to deal with compartmentalized resources planning and management in cities. The development of water, energy, and food nexus (WEF nexus) indicators is a prominent goal of current research, but the focus is mainly on economic issues and material flows. Attention to the local scale and context, social aspects, and the inclusion of non-academic actors is mostly lacking. To address these gaps, this paper reports and reflects on the co-creation of sustainability indicators related to the WEF nexus in the city of Sao Paulo, Brazil. With a transdisciplinary approach, non-academic actors were included in the different stages of the process using the Urban Living Lab methodology, to improve the usability of the produced indicators' set. The case of Sao Paulo concerned on-going actions in the peri-urban and rural areas of the city which seek to improve environmental protection by stimulating more sustainable forms of agriculture. Thirty-four indicators were developed through a sequence of interactive activities, such as workshops, meetings, and field trips. The presented process aims to strongly enhance usability by actively involving users from the start, connecting the nexus approach to previous knowledge and familiar frameworks, paying attention to the local scale and context, and to social aspects, and by anticipating future use in various ways.
AB - Sustainability indicators have become essential tools to deal with compartmentalized resources planning and management in cities. The development of water, energy, and food nexus (WEF nexus) indicators is a prominent goal of current research, but the focus is mainly on economic issues and material flows. Attention to the local scale and context, social aspects, and the inclusion of non-academic actors is mostly lacking. To address these gaps, this paper reports and reflects on the co-creation of sustainability indicators related to the WEF nexus in the city of Sao Paulo, Brazil. With a transdisciplinary approach, non-academic actors were included in the different stages of the process using the Urban Living Lab methodology, to improve the usability of the produced indicators' set. The case of Sao Paulo concerned on-going actions in the peri-urban and rural areas of the city which seek to improve environmental protection by stimulating more sustainable forms of agriculture. Thirty-four indicators were developed through a sequence of interactive activities, such as workshops, meetings, and field trips. The presented process aims to strongly enhance usability by actively involving users from the start, connecting the nexus approach to previous knowledge and familiar frameworks, paying attention to the local scale and context, and to social aspects, and by anticipating future use in various ways.
KW - Sustainability indicators
KW - Water-energy-food nexus
KW - Transdisciplinarity
KW - Usability
KW - URBAN LIVING LABS
KW - KNOWLEDGE
KW - COPRODUCTION
KW - INTEGRATION
U2 - 10.1007/s11625-022-01141-y
DO - 10.1007/s11625-022-01141-y
M3 - Article
C2 - 35497021
SN - 1862-4065
VL - 17
SP - 2315
EP - 2329
JO - Sustainability Science
JF - Sustainability Science
IS - 6
ER -