Doctoral thesis by Dr. Nicola Harvey: Coordinating the Water, Energy and Food Nexus Through Law

We are proud to present the final Doctoral Thesis by Dr. Nicola Harvey, which she successfully defended on May 28, 2025, at Utrecht University.
Her thesis advances understanding of the implications of nexus thinking for law. In particular, the book investigates the factors requiring reflection within the law to enable vertical and horizontal coordination across the water, energy and food nexus in South Africa. This entails positioning law within the broader institutional context shaping political decision-making across water, energy and food policy domains to understand what role the law plays in enabling and constraining coordination. Through organisational, doctrinal and empirical analyses of existing coordination processes in the case study site of Cape Town, South Africa, lessons are drawn from the successes and failures such that an understanding is constructed of the nature and content of an enabling regulatory environment. Recommendations are then made for those factors requiring reflection within the regulatory design to better support coordination across the water, energy and food nexus.View PhD thesis