Nexusing Water, Energy and Food to Increase Resilience in the Cape Town Metropolitan Area

Nexusing Water, Energy and Food to Increase Resilience in the Cape Town Metropolitan Area

Nicola Harvey

PhD Candidate at Centre for Water, Oceans and Sustainability Law at Utrecht University

Nicola Harvey is a PhD researcher at Utrecht University’s Centre for Water, Oceans and Sustainability Law (UCWOSL) conducting interdisciplinary research on the legal and institutional challenges shaping the governance of water, energy and food security nexuses through doctrinal and empirical study. The PhD research is supervised by Prof. Dr. Anoeska Buijze, Prof. Dr. Marleen van Rijswick and Prof. Dr. Jochen Monstadt.

Nicola holds a Bachelor’s degree in Law (LLB, 2017) and a Master’s degree in Commercial Law (LLM, cum laude, 2019) from the University of Cape Town, South Africa, and a Master’s Degree in International and European Law (LLM, cum laude, 2020) from Radboud University, The Netherlands.

Publications
Nicola is conducting empirical legal research into policy and administrative coordination across water, energy and food sectors within the multi-level intergovernmental structure with a case study of South Africa. Her focus is, in particular, on the role of law and the prevailing institutional structure in shaping coordinating practices across these three resources sectors and all levels of government. This is achieved through (1) doctrinal legal analysis of the existing administrative and sectoral laws designating powers and functions to government officials, (2) empirical legal analysis of the coordinating mechanisms being utilized by government officials in practice.
Though her case study is on South Africa, the analytical framework designed is portable to other jurisdictions demonstrating its utility for research on formal (legal) aspects of WEF nexus governance.